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DEC  20  1912 

BOHLEN  LECTURES,  INAUGURAL  SERIES. 


FOUR  LECTURES 


Delivered  in  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity,  Phila- 
delphia, in  the  Year  1877, 


FOUNDATION  OF  THE  LATE  JOHN  BOHLEN,  Esq. 


ALEXANDER  H.VlNTON,  D.D. 


SECOND  EDITION. 


NEW   YORK  : 
THOMAS  WHITTAKER, 

2  and  3  Bible  House, 
1887. 


Printed  for  the  Rector,  Churchwardens, 
and  Vestrymen  of  the  Church  of 
the  Holy  Trinity,  Philadel- 
phia,  Trustees  of  the 
John  Bohlen  Lect- 
ureship. 


THE  JOHN  BOHLEN  LECTURESHIP. 


John  Bohlen,  who  died  in  this  city  on  the  twenty- 
sixth  day  of  April,  1874,  bequeathed  to  trustees  a  fund 
of  $100,000,  to  be  distributed  to  religious  and  chari- 
table objects  in  accordance  with  the  well-known  wishes 
of  the  testator. 

By  a  deed  of  trust,  executed  June  2,  1875,  the 
trustees  under  the  will  of  Mr.  Bohlen  transferred  and 
paid  over  to  "  The  Rector,  Church-wardens,  and 
Vestrymen  of  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity,  Phila- 
delphia," in  trust,  a  sum  of  money  for  certain 
designated  purposes,  out  of  which  fund  the  sum  of 
$10,000  was  set  apart  for  the  endowment  of  The  John 
Bohlen  Lectureship,  upon  the  following  terms  and 
conditions : — 

"The  money  shall  be  invested  in  good,  substantial,  and  safe 
securities,  and  held  in  trust  for  a  fund  to  be  called  '  The  John 
Bohlen  Lectureship, '  and  the  income  shall  be  applied  annually 
to  the  payment  of  a  qualified  person,  whether  clergyman  or 
layman,  for  the  delivery  and  publication  of  at  least  one  hundred 
copies  of  two  or  more  lecture  sermons.     These  lectures  shall  be 


The  John  Bohlen  Lectureship. 


delivered  at  such  time  and  place,  in  the  city  of  Philadelphia,  as 
the  persons  iora mated  to  appoint  the  lecturer  shall  from  time 
to  time  de  srmine,  giving  at  least  six  months'  notice  to  the 
person  appointed  to  deliver  the  same,  when  the  same  may  con- 
veniently be  done,  and  in  no  case  selecting  the  same  person  as 
lecturer  a  second  time  within  a  period  of  five  years.  The  pay- 
ment shall  be  made  to  said  lecturer,  after  the  lectures  have  been 
printed  and  received  by  the  trustees,  of  all  the  income  for  the 
year  derived  from  said  fund,  after  defraying  the  expense  of 
printing  the  lectures  and  the  other  incidental  expenses  attending 
the  same. 

"The  subject  of  such  lectures  shall  be  such  as  is  within  the 
terms  set  forth  in  the  will  of  the  Rev.  John  Bampton  for  the 
delivery  of  what  are  known  as  the  '  Bampton  Lectures, '  at 
Oxford,  or  any  other  subject  distinctively  connected  with  or 
relating  to  the  Christian  religion. 

"  The  lecturer  shall  be  appointed  annually  in  the  month  of 
May,  or  as  soon  thereafter  as  can  conveniently  be  done,  by  the 
persons  who  for  the  time  being  shall  hold  the  offices  of  Bishop 
of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  of  the  Diocese  in  which  is 
the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity;  the  Rector  of  said  church;  the 
Professor  of  Biblical  Learning,  the  Professor  of  Systematic 
Divinity,  and  the  Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  History,  in  the 
Divinity  School  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  in  Phil- 
adelphia. 

"In  case  either  of  said  offices  are  vacant,  the  others  may 
nominate  the  lecturer." 

Under  this  trust  the  Kev.  Alexander  H.  Vinton, 
D.D.,  of  Boston,  was  appointed  to  deliver  the  lectures 
for  the  year  1877. 

PHTLADEiiPHiA.,  Easter,  1877. 


fyyj    ft'*M«f* 


LECTURE  I. 


THE    PERSONALITY    OF    GOD. 


CONTENTS, 

LECTURE  I. 
The    Personality   of    God 9 

LECTURE  II. 
The   Tri-personality  of    God 39 

LECTURE  III. 
The    Atonement 73 

LECTURE  IV. 
The    Holy    Ghost 105 


LECTURE   I. 

THE  PERSONALITY  OF  GOD. 

IN  accepting  the  invitation  to  inaugurate  this 
series  of  the  Bohlen  Lectures,  I  enjoyed  a 
peculiar  pleasure,  a  pleasure  tinged  with  the 
sweetness  of  a  certain   sadness. 

The  title  is  a  memorial  of  him  with  whom  I 
was  once  connected  by  official  ties,  for  whom  I 
cherished  an  affectionate  personal  regard,  and 
whose  character  I  held  in  most  respectful  esteem. 
I  remembered  the  kindness  of  his  temper,  the 
readiness  of  his  heart,  the  fixedness  of  his  con- 
science, his  unfailing  labors  of  beneficence;  in  a 
word,  I  remembered  the  supremacy  of  the  piety 
that  suggested  his  motives,  controlled  his  life, 
shaped  his  character,  and  inspired  him  with  such 
loving  consecration  of  self  to  his  Saviour  and 
(9) 


io  Lcctiwe  First. 


Lord  as  branched  out  spontaneously  and  gladly 
into  all  good  words  and  works.  His  religion  was 
his  life,  whose  sovereign  impulse,  the  glory  of 
Christ,  directed  itself  into  all  the  channels  of 
beneficence  and  subsidized  his  culture  and  his 
wealth  for  the  good  of  his  fellow-men.  It  was  in 
perfect  keeping  with  his  character,  therefore,  that 
his  dying  wish  should  be  for  the  holy  faith  which 
he  had  loved  and  lived  for  and  had  taught  for 
many  years  to  successive  classes  of  young  men; 
that  his  teaching  might  survive  in  other  utterances 
than  his,  and  still  be  his;  that  in  a  larger  way  and 
with  a  certain  perpetuity  he  might  still  speak, 
though  dead.  Hence  the  institution  of  this  lecture- 
ship, his  apt  memorial, — better  than  wreathed 
flowers  cast  upon  his  coffin  and  smothered  in  his 
grave:  living  plants,  rather,  whose  fresh  fragrance 
is  restored  as  the  seasons  return;  better  than  mar- 
ble ef^gj,  coldly  glittering  in  its  solitariness;  a 
memorial,  rather,  that  lives  and  speaks  to  passing 
men,  and  speaks,  as  he  himself  would  speak,  of  the 
great  salvation.  So  may  these  lectures  always 
speak,  just  as  he  would  have  them  do,  of  the  truth 
as  '  t  is  in  Jesus ! 


The  Personality  of  God.  II 

To  this  loving  recognition,  which  ray  heart  could 
not  refuse,  of  my  former  associate  and  friend,  may 
I  not  add  a  word,  congratulating  myself  that  I 
stand  once  more  before  you,  the  congregation  to 
whom  fifteen  years  ago  I  ministered  in  the  things 
of  the  gospel  ?  I  do  so  with  the  more  assurance 
because  I  know  that  whatever  of  superseding  in- 
fluences may  have  come  between  your  hearts  and 
me  in  that  long  interval,  yet  the  occasion  and  the 
name  it  bears  will  at  least  gain  for  me  a  welcome. 

In  suggesting  this  course  of  lectures,  our  friend 
left  ample  range  in  the  choice  of  topics.  They 
might  be  gathered  from  the  whole  fertile  field  of 
theology,  and  grouped  at  the  discretion  of  the  lec- 
turer. As  I  scanned  this  field,  it  was  plain  that 
among  its  crowd  of  theories  there  were  some 
subsidiary  doctrines,  which  had  once  been  inter- 
esting, but  had  lost  their  freshness  with  the  ex- 
igency that  begat  them. 

There  were  other  topics,  however,  whose  im- 
portance is  as  rich  and  constant  as  the  relation 
between  God  and  the  soul,  that  are  now  encoun- 
tering the  antagonism  of  our  sceptical  and  aggres- 
sive age.     Of  these  truths  I  have  made  choice  of 


12  Lecture  First. 


four  to  be  the  subjects  of  as  many  lectures.  The 
first,  "  The  Personality  of  God  "  ;  the  second,  "  His 
Triune  Subsistence"  ;  the  third,  "  His  Redemptive 
Work  for  Man,  the  Atonement  of  Christ"  ;  and 
the  fourth,  "  His  Curative  and  Sanctifying  Agency 
in  Man,  the  Power  and  Work  of  the  Holy  Ghost." 
Whenever  unbelief  would  make  its  fiercest  on- 
slaught upon  the  faith  of  Christians,  it  aims  at  the 
first  of  these  truths;  and  whenever  the  spirit  of 
error  in  the  church  becomes  pronounced,  it  has 
always  selected  one  or  another  or  all  of  the  other 
three. 

These  four  truths  embody  themselves  in  the 
most  prominent  statements  of  our  creed,  and  in 
treating  them  I  will  make  those  statements  my 
starting-points. 

In  discussing,  therefore,  the  first  of  these  topics, 
the  personality  of  God,  I  denote  its  import  in  these 
words:  "I  believe  in  one  God,  the  Father  Al- 
mighty, Maker  of  heaven  and  earth,  and  of  all 
things  visible  and  invisible."  This  general  state- 
ment involves  these  derivative  statements,  viz. :  The 
universe  has  a  personal  Creator,  whose  nature  and 
attributes  are  infinite,  and  in  virtue  of  that  per- 


The  Personality  of  God. 


sonality  he  is  capable  of  coming  into  personal 
relations  with  us,  so  that  he  can  be  to  us  a  Father 
and  we  can  be  to  him  as  children. 

Ever    since    men    began   to   think,    they   have 
thought  about  God,   that   is,   they  have   thought 
about  the  origin  of  the  world,  and  how  anything 
came  to   exist.     The  Oriental  philosophies,   older, 
perhaps,   by  thousands   of  years  than   our   Chris- 
tianity, busied  themselves  with  this  chief  thought, 
and  so  did  the  schools  of  the  Grecian  philosophy. 
The  cosmogony,  the  theory  of  the  universe,  was 
the  one  burden  of  their  speculations.     In  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  philosophy  dealt  more  with  ideas  that 
lie  this   side  of  those  primary  ones.     Assuming 
the  existence  of  God,  they  discussed  his  counsels 
and  his  plans,  and  his  relations  to  mankind,  and 
might  rather  be  called  theologies.     At  a  still  more 
recent    date    there    started   up    again    a    philoso- 
phy that  engrossed  almost  the  whole  of  German 
thought.     It  was  a  speculative  system  throughout. 
It  began  its  thinking  outside  of  the  visible  world, 
and  its  reasoning,   drawn    from  a  priori  assump- 
tions, was  directed  not  so  much  to  show  what  is 
the  constitution  of  the  universe  as  to  prove  what 


14  Lecture  First. 


it  must  be.  This,  which  was  called  the  spiritual 
philosophy,  was  by  a  return  of  the  pendulum 
of  thought  replaced  by  the  materialistic  sys- 
tem of  our  day,  which  confines  itself  to  the  in- 
vestigation of  the  structure  and  forces  of  the 
world  about  us. 

With  this  system  we  have  been  made  sufficiently 
familiar  from  the  presence  among  us  of  Huxley 
and  Tyndall  and  Proctor  as  its  spokesmen  and 
apostles,  and  from  the  writings  that  occupy  the 
counters  of  the  book-stores,  the  pages  of  the  re- 
views, the  columns  of  the  newspapers.  It  forms 
the  staple  of  our  common  talk  in  the  parlors  and 
the  railroad-cars,  so  that  not  to  know  something 
of  this  system  is  to  betray  the  lack  of  finished 
culture. 

The  whole  long  category  of  philosophical  sys- 
tems, comprehending  all  the  great  and  various 
thinking  of  the  world,  may  be  resolved  into  two 
systems,  one  of  them  pantheism  and  the  other 
materialism, — pantheism  beginning  with  the  ab- 
stract and  the  possible  and  reasoning  forward  to 
explain  the  actual;  and  the  other  beginning  with 
the  actual  and  tracing  it  back  towards  the  abstract 


The  Personality  of  God.  15 

and  the  invisible,  but  stopping  short  at  both.  If 
men  think  at  all  on  philosophical  themes  they 
must  think  from  one  or  the  other  of  these  two 
standing-points,  so  that  there  can  be  but  two 
essential  philosophies.  Moreover,  among  the  whole 
long  list  of  philosophical  thinkers  from  seven  hun- 
dred years  before  Christ  down  to  the  present  hour, 
almost  none  have  been  led  by  their  thinking  to 
recognize  a  personal  God.  Among  the  ancients 
Anaxagoras  was  the  first  to  maintain  that  the 
universe  was  governed  by  a  personal  mind;  yet 
he  made  but  little  use  of  the  idea  in  his  system 
and  he  had  no  important  following. 

There  was  no  school  of  believers  in  a  personal 
Deity.  Hippocrates,  the  father  of  medicine,  did 
indeed  so  far  accept  the  opinion  as  to  maintain 
that  the  Deity  might  be  invoked  to  help  the  good 
effect  of  his  prescriptions.  Besides  this  I  know  of 
no  other  instance  in  which  the  pagan  philosophy 
came  near  touching  with  one  of  its  fingers  the  re- 
vealed truth  of  a  personal  and  parental  God.  The 
two  great  philosophies  were  essentially  atheistic. 

The  system  of  pantheism  is  most  clearly  ex- 
pounded by  Spinoza,  its  modern  reviver.     Spinoza 


1 6  Lecture  First. 


held  that  there  was  one  eternal  something  which 
he  called  "  substance."  He  did  not  mean  material 
substance,  nor  perhaps  anything  that  we  call  spirit- 
ual, but  it  was  an  existence  of  some  sort,  without 
intelligence  and  without  voluntary  powers  or  any 
attributes  that  could  betoken  personality. 

It  was  the  nature  of  this  eternal  substance  to  radi- 
ate and  evolve  itself  continually,  and  in  doing  so 
it  took  on  visible  and  tangible  shapes  and  efflor- 
esced into  a  material  universe.  This  universe,  pass- 
ing on  through  the  stages  of  life  and  decay,  was 
resolved  back  again  to  its  original  matrix  to  be 
again  evolved  and  decay,  and  so  to  chase  its  own 
life  round  and  round  in  a  never-ending  circuit. 

Thus  the  visible  world  was  only  the  necessary 
form  of  this  eternal  substance,  spinning  itself  out 
from  itself  and  winding  itself  back  into  itself.  If 
we  call  that  eternal  substance  God,  then  God  was 
the  world  itself,  and  the  world  itself  was  God. 

Now  Spinoza  did  call  this  substance  God,  and 
since  he  made  that  substance  to  be  the  all  in  all  of 
everything,  his  contemporaries  called  him  a  "  God- 
intoxicated  man.  " 

This  is  essential  pantheisn  according  to  its  ablest 


The  Personality  of  God.  iy 

expositor.  We  see  that  it  must  be  godless  from 
its  want  of  personality.  We  can  hold  no  com- 
munion with  that  eternal  substance,  because  it  is 
unintelligent  ;  we  cannot  supplicate  nor  deprecate 
it,  for  it  has  no  feeling  and  no  will  ;  we  cannot 
worship  it,  for  it  has  no  character.  There  can  be 
no  moral  distinction,  no  right,  no  wrong,  because 
everything  that  happens  is  but  the  evolution  of 
God. 

As  it  has  no  connection  with  us  but  in  material 
forms,  so  our  nearest  approach  to  it  is  in  the  ad- 
miration of  nature  and  in  the  indulgence  of  our 
natural  desires.  I  said  just  now  that  so  much  of 
the  philosophy  as  has  ever  been  in  the  world  that 
was  not  pantheistic  was  materialistic,  and  this, 
like  the  other,  denied  the  personality  of  God.  Al- 
most all  the  earlier  philosophers  were  of  this 
school,  and  ever  since  then  the  fashion  of  thinking 
has  vibrated  between  pantheism  and  materialism, 
and  each  has  held  an  alternate  and  royal  sway  in 
the  realm  of  philosophy. 

Materialism  teaches  that  the  world  is  made  up 
of  two  principles  of  matter  and  motion,  and  that 
when  the  action  of  motion  upon  matter  is  begun, 


1 8  Lecture  First. 


matter  is  evolved,  by  necessary  laws  of  its  being, 
into  a  universe  of  varied  forms  and  lives. 

The  old  materialism  did  not  differ  from  the 
modern  in  these  fundamental  principles.  Its  phil- 
osophy was  the  same,  although  it  was  far  less  rich 
in  its  knowledge  of  the  facts  of  Nature  and  of  the 
affinities  that  work  out  her  changes.  In  this 
knowledge  our  modern  materialistic  science  is 
affluent  beyond  all  precedent.  I  remind  you  only 
of  a  truism  when  I  say  that  the  rise  of  our  modern 
science  has  been  like  a  dayspring  to  the  intel- 
lectual and  physical  life  of  our  century.  At  her 
word  of  command  our  civilization  has  sprung  for- 
ward, at  a  single  bound,  farther  than  in  many 
weary  generations  of  the  ages  gone.  By  develop- 
ing and  utilizing  the  forces  of  nature,  she  has  ren- 
dered labor  and  its  products  so  facile  and  sure 
that  in  convenience,  comfort,  and  physical  enjoy- 
ment life  seems  to  be  concentrated  to  a  focus  ; 
and  the  processes  by  which  her  achievements 
have  been  won  are  some  of  them  amazing  feats  of 
intellectual  vigor.  The  nebular  hypothesis  of  the 
formation  of  the  world,  that  glorious  guess  of  La- 
place, reaching  into  the  realms  of  conjecture,  and 


The  Personality  of  God.  19 

bringing  back  its  far-off  conceptions,  verified  by 
all  the  known  phenomena  of  the  universe,  has  al- 
most a  supernatural  look.  The  suggestion  of  an 
imponderable  ether  surrounding  and  penetrating 
the  fabric  of  the  world — a  suggestion  outside  of 
experiment,  yet  explaining  the  theory  of  light  and 
perhaps  of  sound  more  satisfactorily  than  any 
former  endeavor — is  another  of  the  brilliant,  pro- 
phetic flashes  of  scientific  thought  that  almost  urge 
the  common  mind  to  cry,  "What  is  man?  Thou 
hast  made  him  a  little,  only  a  little,  lower  than 
the  angels !  " 

Yet  these  discoveries,  being  the  fruits  of  hy- 
pothesis and  not  of  strict  analysis,  may  be  regarded 
as  happy  strokes  of  mental  ingenuity  rather  than 
as  legitimate  products  of  science;  for  it  is  the  sin- 
gular quality  and  boast  of  modern  science  that  it 
is  purely  inductive.  Its  processes  consist  in  ob« 
serving  and  analyzing  particular  phenomena, 
arranging  them  according  to  their  essential 
likenesses,  until  the  whole  of  the  material  world 
is  resolved  into  its  elementary  forms.  In  this,  the 
legitimate  sphere  of  Science,  her  processes  of  gen- 
eralization have  developed  admirable  results.     She 


20  Lecture  First. 


has  assorted  all  the  facts  and  forces  of  matter  into 
groups,  and  learned  the  laws  by  which  the  primal 
forms  of  things  are  organized  into  a  Kosmos,  a 
whole,  harmonious  world;  she  has  demonstrated 
that  all  the  forms  of  matter  are  only  one  matter, 
that  the  universal  variety  of  things  sprang  from  one 
primordial  germ:*  but  her  chief  and  happiest  gen- 
eralization has  been  in  resolving  the  various  ma- 
terial forces  into  one  primal  force,  of  which  the  rest, 
are,  by  a  high  probability,  simply  derivations  or 
modifications.  These  derived  forces  are  therefore 
congeners, — a  sisterhood  with  one  mother,  so  joined 
in  functions  that  any  one  of  them  may  replace  and 
do  the  work  of  either  of  the  others. 

Although  the  experiments  have  not  yet  been 
full  enough  to  demonstrate  this  fact  in  its  entire 
breadth,  yet  enough  is  known  to  supply  a  founda- 
tion of  what  is  called  "  the  doctrine  of  the  correla- 
tion offerees." 

That  doctrine  is  described  by  Prof.  Grove,  one 
of  its  earliest  expounders,  in  these  words:  "The 
various  affections  of  matter  which  constitute  the 
main  objects  of  experimental  physics,  viz.,  heat, 
light,  electricity,  magnetism,  chemical  affinity,  and 


The  Personality  of  God.  2t 


motion,  are  all  correlative  or  have  a  reciprocal  de- 
pendence, so  that  neither,  taken  abstractedly,  can 
be  said  to  be  the  essential  cause  of  the  others,  but 
either  may  produce  or  be  convertible  into  any  of 
the  others.  Thus  heat  may  mediately  or  imme- 
diately produce  electricity,  electricity  may  produce 
heat,  and  so  of  the  rest,  each  merging  itself  as  the 
force  it  produces  becomes  developed ;  and  the  same 
must  hold  good  of  the  other  forces." 

The  parent  force  of  this  united  family  of  forces 
would  seem,  in  the  opinion  of  Prof.  Grove,  to  be 
the  principle  or  power  of  motion ;  and  so  the  con- 
clusion is  that  even  as  the  forms  of  matter  are 
resolvable  into  one  homogeneous  matter,  so  the 
forces  of  the  world  are  reducible  to  one  unit  of 
force.  Science  has  taught  us,  moreover,  that  this 
many-sided  force  operates  in  all  its  modifications 
by  fixed  and  ascertainable  methods,  which  she 
calls  the  laws  of  the  material  world. 

This  theory  seems,  indeed,  to  encounter  among 
the  phenomena  of  the  world  at  least  one  exception 
which  refuses  to  enter  into  this  category  of  the 
forces.  There  is  another  force,  unique  in  charac- 
ter, which  stands  outside,  as  a  stranger  to  the  fam- 


22  Lecture  First. 


ily,  if  not  indeed  an  antagonist.  It  is  the  vital 
force,  the  principle  of  organic  life  throughout  the 
world,  pervading  every  organism  and  maintaining 
each  individual  existence.  It  has  been  attempted, 
but  in  the  opinion  of  some  scientific  men  hitherto 
unsuccessfully,  to  bring  the  vital  force  into  corre- 
lation with  the  rest. 

There  are  obvious  conditions  in  which  the  re- 
lationship fails,  or  if  there  be  relationship  it  is  not 
that  of  equality,  but  rather  that  of  the  mastership 
of  the  vital  force;  for  it  has  a  sort  of  formative 
power  that  in  its  normal  state  controls  the  work- 
ing of  the  other  forces,  and  utilizes  them  for  its 
own  purposes,  even  neutralizing  the  action,  if 
need  be,  of  heat  and  elasticity  and  chemical  affin- 
ity, so  that  itself  shall  be  supreme,  as  it  is  sin- 
gular, in  every  organism.  And  when  once  the  vi- 
tal force  has  become  extinct,  it  gets  no  restoring 
or  supplementing  help  from  the  rest,  but  rather 
they  seize  upon  the  lifeless  form  and  rush  it  into 
speedy  decay,  until  the  once  vitalized  structure 
is  dissolved  into  its  atoms,  which  can  never  be  re- 
organized until  the  banished  force  shall  come  again 
from   its  unascertained  home  and  pronounce  the 


The  Personality  of  God.  23 

vitalizing  word  "  Live  !  "  Yet,  notwithstanding 
the  exceptional  character  of  the  vital  force,  the 
theory  of  the  correlation  of  forces  stands  out  as  a 
masterly  demonstration,  and  all  that  is  necessary 
for  the  purpose  to  which  I  would  apply  it. 

There  is  a  wondrous  satisfaction  to  the  mind, 
looking  at  the  complicated  machinery  of  the  ma- 
terial world  and  the  promiscuous  movements  of  its 
seemingly  discordant  forces,  to  learn  that  the  dis- 
cord is  truly  the  most  beautiful  order,  and  the  pro- 
miscuous methods  the  working  of  a  perfect  unity 
of  plan. 

These  two  demonstrations  constitute  the  main 
theoretic  results  of  modern  science.  They  might 
seem  at  first  view  to  be  but  insignificant  results 
of  all  the  searching  thought  and  labor  they  have 
cost;  but  they  are  elementary  facts  of  the  material 
world,  and,  like  other  elementary  things,  they 
contain  the  possibilities  of  all  things. 

Science,  therefore,  erects  her  imposing  figure  be- 
fore the  age,  and  holds  in  her  lifted  hands  these 
two  demonstrations  as  her  vouchers  of  authority. 
If  this  were  all  she  did,  not  one  of  us  would  do 
aught  but  bow  down  his  mind  and  do  her  rever- 


24  Lecture  First. 


ence;  but  in  the  pride  of  her  great  prowess,  she 
has  sometimes  advanced  the  claim  that  in  ex- 
plaining the  system  of  the  material  world  she  has 
disclosed  the  whole  truth  of  the  universe,  and  has 
declared  that  there  is  no  knowledge  besides  that 
which  comes  from  induction,  and  so  Science  is 
understood  to  be  at  war  with  that  whole  class  of 
conceptions  that  lie  outside  of  the  material  world 
and  which  are  necessarily  included  in  every  form 
of  religion.  This  is  the  reason  why  science  and 
religion  are  nowadays  understood  to  be  in  antago- 
nism to  one  another,  specially  in  the  fundamental 
idea  of  a  personal  God.  I  would  like  to  show  that 
so  far  is  this  from  being  true,  the  actual  and  ad- 
mitted results  of  scientific  research  are  true  indi- 
cators of  a  personal  Deity.  As  an  inductive  sys- 
tem, science  ought  not  to  be  reproached  for  not 
recognizing  a  Deity  in  the  world.  This  is  not  one 
of  the  demonstrations  that  belong  to  induction. 
Induction  is  pure  observation,  and  all  the  faculties 
required  in  an  inductive  process  are  the  perceptive 
faculties,  and  God  is  not  an  object  of  perception. 
It  were  as  great  an  error  for  Science  to  under- 
take to  demonstrate  a  Deity  by  her  processes  as  it 


The  Personality  of  God.  25 

is  for  her  to  claim  that  the  perceptive  faculties  are 
the  only  ones  we  have  for  the  discovery  of  truth, 
while  these  faculties  really  belong  to  the  lowest 
tier  of  man's  mental  endowments. 

Above  the  level  of  the  perceptions  there  is  the 
realm  of  reason,  which  is  the  birthplace  of  all  our 
higher  powers  and  conceptions.  Our  deepest  ap- 
prehensions of  truth,  our  loftiest  motives,  our  sub- 
limest  reach  of  thought,  spring  in  a  region  where 
the  perceptive  powers  have  no  play  and  no  place. 
They  all  come  from  the  intuitions  of  reason,  cer- 
tain first  principles,  which  are  not  so  much  thoughts 
as  they  are  conditions,  without  which  the  mind 
cannot  think  at  all. 

The  axioms  of  mathematics  are  of  this  sort, — 
conceptions  of  the  pure  reason  not  evolved  by  ex- 
periment. The  ideas  of  unity,  of  cause,  of  power, 
of  time,  space,  infinitude,  are  born  of  the  mind  it- 
self. The  mind  cannot  live  without  them.  Science 
slurs  them  as  metaphysical  and  worthless,  yet 
Science  cannot  carry  out  a  demonstration  without 
adopting  the  terminology  of  metaphysics.  She 
speaks  of  cause  and  effect,  which  are  metaphysical 
conceptions  purely,  for  science  never  saw  a  cause, 


26  Lecture  First. 


but  only  sequence;  and  of  force,  yet  no  one  ever 
analyzed  a  force;  and  of  unity,  which  she  con- 
stantly reaches  after  but  never  saw  in  nature;  and 
of  space  and  time  and  infinitude,  ideas  which  turn 
the  perceptive  faculties  into  a  mockery.  Science 
ought  therefore  frankly  to  admit  both  the  reality 
and  the  authority  of  reason  as  a  faculty  far  out- 
reaching  the  possibilities  of  perception,  and  adap- 
ted to  explore  those  higher  truths  which  the  per- 
ceptive faculties  were  not  made  to  learn. 

When  we  have  been  brought  to  the  last  con- 
clusions of  Science,  force  guided  by  unity  of  method 
and  law,  if  we  should  accept  her  dictum,  that  we 
had  learned  all  that  can  be  known  of  the  truth  of 
the  universe,  we  should  be  indeed  left  to  a  total 
godlessness  of  mind.  But  man's  nature  refuses  to 
be  defrauded  of  its  birthright  of  reason,  refuses  to 
have  its  divine  prerogative  of  thinking  ignored  by 
any  system  which,  with  all  its  claims  to  respect, 
still  denies  a  thousand  times  more  knowledge  than 
it  possesses;  and  so,  when  Science  brings  forth  her 
demonstrations,  Reason  at  once  accepts  them,  and 
makes  them  the  starting-point  for  a  flight  to  higher 
truth. 


The  Personality  of  God.  27 

In  this  way  material  Science  answers  her  true 
character  as  a  guide  and  janitor,  leading  the  mind 
gracefully  to  the  doorway  of  a  higher  realm,  and 
saying,  "  I  can  teach  you  no  more.  Enter  up  now 
among  the  sublimities  of  truth.  Farewell !  "  Rea- 
son begins,  then,  with  the  scientific  fact  of  the 
unit  of  force.  And  what  is  force  ?  What  is  its 
source  and  origin?  Science  has  already  told  us 
that  the  several  forces  of  the  world  are  not  prim- 
itive but  derived  forces.  She  tells  us  that  when 
the  billiard  player  propels  the  ivory  balls  about 
the  table,  each  ball  driving  the  next,  the  force  is 
not  in  the  ivory.  Is  it  in  the  wooden  cue  ?  Not 
there.  In  the  bones  and  muscles  of  the  player's 
arm  ?  Still  not  there.  These  are  only  the  con- 
veyancers of  force.  Follow  up  the  line  of  power 
and  you  find  it  springing  fresh-born  from  the  will 
of  the  player.  This  is  the  ultimate  conception  of 
the  origin  of  force,  the  product  of  volition  verified 
as  a  fact  by  our  own  intimate  consciousness.  No 
proof  can  go  behind  this.  It  is  as  absolute  as  the 
consciousness  of  life  itself.  The  child  learns  it 
when,  putting  forth  its  little  arm,  it  encounters  a 
resisting  thing,  and  musters  an  effort  to  push  it 


28  Lecture  First. 


aside.  The  conscious  volition  and  the  conception 
oi  power  come  into  birth  together  in  the  child's 
mind,  and  abide  together  as  long  as  his  conscious 
life.  Nature  teaches  us,  then,  that  force  is  the 
essential  product  of  will;  and  it  follows  hence  that 
behind  the  grand  unit  of  force  which  actuates  and 
pervades  the  world  there  abides  a  mighty  will 
whose  volition  is  the  going  forth  of  the  universal 
life.  But  the  question  springs  up  to  the  causal 
faculty  of  reason,  What  is  the  character  of  this 
mighty  will?  Is  it  a  blind,  impulsive  force,  rush- 
ing forth  in  contortions  and  spasms  of  effort, 
without  aim  or  purpose?  Science  answers  this 
question  for  us  in  advance,  for  she  discloses  through- 
out the  universe  a  single  great  law  or  method  by 
which  all  the  forces  of  the  world  are  guided  to 
their  destinations.  Various  as  those  methods  seem, 
they  act  all  in  perfect  harmony,  and  are  all  re- 
ducible back  to  a  unit  of  law  co-ordinate  with  the 
unit  of  force.  And  this  harmony  is  not  the  work 
of  chance.  Chance  is  an  alien  in  the  realm  of 
science.  Science  shuts  her  doors  against  the  crazy 
intruder.  Order,  arrangement,  plan,  whatsoever 
requires  to  be  developed  by  mind,  must  itself  be 


The  Personality  of  God.  29 

the  product  of  mind.  Whatsoever  comes  into 
the  intelligence  must  have  sprung  from  intelli- 
gence. To  make  an  intelligible  product  there  must 
be  an  intelligent  producer.  The  great  will,  then,  is 
not  blind  nor  wild  nor  fatalistic.  It  is  a  clear-eyed 
and  wise  will,  giving  out  a  force  that  moves 
always  by  rule  and  destination.  If  the  universal 
force  is  the  outcome  of  will,  so  the  universal  order 
is  the  expression  of  intelligence.  And  now  let  us 
remember  that  both  intelligence  and  will  are  the 
distinctive  attributes  of  personality.  We  can  think 
of  them  in  no  other  than  a  personal  relation.  If 
this  be  so,  we  have  been  guided  by  the  teachings 
of  Science  herself  to  the  magnificent  conclusion  of 
a  personal  being,  super-material  in  his  nature,  en- 
dowed with  the  intelligence  and  power  that  up- 
holds the  universe.  Thus  we  have  reached  a  firm 
stand-point  for  fresh  exploration.  Does  this  wise 
force  comprehend  all  that  belongs  to  the  sovereign 
of  creation  ?  Let  Nature  respond  once  more :  Thus 
far  we  have  inquired  only  among  the  laws  of  the 
insensible  world.  Let  us  try  the  ascending  scale 
of  creation,  and  here  at  the  top  we  behold  the 
human  creature,  man.     He  sits  as  a  king,  endowed, 


30  Lecture  First. 


like  the  Creator  himself,  with  intelligence  and  will, 
as  if  he  were  not  merely  a  product  but  rather  a 
portrait  of  the  great  Creator;  not  only  demonstrat- 
ing but  illustrating  him, — a  sort  of  type  of  that 
grand  personality  to  which  science  has  introduced 
us,  as  the  archetype.  In  this  new  subject  of 
observation  we  discover  a  property  we  did  not 
discover  in  the  material  world.  We  find  in  man 
a  moral  element  which  is  in  truth  the  surpassing 
dignity  of  his  nature,  unique  as  it  is  lofty. 

The  material  world  could  not  teach  us  of  this, 
for  matter  has  no  moral  sense.  As  we  see  it  in 
man  it  seems  to  sit  on  his  soul  as  on  a  throne,  the 
imperial  faculty  of  his  nature.  True,  it  is  imper- 
fect, with  spots  upon  its  face  and  with  its  power 
broken  by  many  a  hard  strain,  but  the  ideal 
character  of  man's  moral  nature  is  glorious.  Its 
conceptions  mount  up  to  perfection,  its  regal  voice 
has  the  power  of  thunder;  and  yet  it  is  remarkable 
that,  grand  as  it  is,  it  always  recognizes  a  moral 
sovereignty  above  itself,  to  which  it  bows  clown, 
of  which  it  stands  in  awe.  If  man  is  by  nature  a 
moral  being,  and  if  the  Creator  cannot  be  inferior 
to  his  own  work,  then  the  Creator,  too,  is  a  moral 


The  Personality  of  God.  31 

being.  The  intuition  of  reason,  the  causative 
faculty,  grasps  this  fresh  discovery,  and  transfers 
the  conception  from  the  typical  creature  to  the 
archetypal  Creator,  and  then  the  presence  stands 
before  us  in  its  completeness.  Look  at  it,  then, 
as  nature  and  reason  have  revealed  him, — a  super- 
natural personage,  mighty,  wise,  and  good,  worthy 
to  be  God.  Induction  has  guided  us  to  the  limits 
of  her  demonstrations,  the  intuitive  reason  has  led 
those  demonstrations  to  the  point  of  assurance. 
But,  still  with  this  assurance  of  the  personal  Crea- 
tor, a  question  arises,  How  great  is  he  ?  Is  he 
great  enough  to  be  the  finality  of  my  peace  and 

In  other  words,  although  we  have  found  a  being 
with  power  enough  to  create  the  world,  with 
wisdom  enough  to  order  it,  and  with  enough  of 
moral  goodness  to  govern  it  justly  and  kindly,  yet 
how  far  do  these  qualities  reach  ?  I  may  be  satis- 
fied to  say  with  the  creed,  "  I  believe  in  the 
Creator  of  heaven  and  earth";  but  can  I  believe 
that  his  power  is  unlimited  so  that  I  can  say, 
"Almighty"?  I  may  say  1  believe  in  God,  but 
can  I  say  that  his  moral  goodness  is  without  possi- 


32  Lecture  First. 


ble  deduction,  so  that  I  can  call  hirn  the  only  God? 
And  Reason  answers  her  own  question.  Her  in- 
tuitions disclose  the  transcendental  truths  of  time 
and  space  and  infinitude  and  unity  as  the  proper- 
ties of  existence,  and  as  soon  as  the  intuition  of 
causality  has  revealed  the  personal  first  cause,  the 
other  intuitions  combine  to  clothe  the  conception 
with  the  necessary  attributes  of  infinity.  The 
first  cause  must  be  eternal.  If  his  is  a  necessary 
existence  he  must  exist  alone,  since  there  cannot 
be  two  necessary  existences;  and  for  the  same 
reason  he  must  exist  everywhere;  and  since  his 
attributes  must  be  as  necessary  as  his  existence, 
they,  too,  must  be  infinite,  his  power  absolute,  his 
knowledge  taking  in  the  past,  the  present,  and 
the  possible,  his  moral  goodness  utterly  perfect. 
But  some  may  say,  "  How  does  reason  teach  us 
all  this  of  the  Creator,  since  reason  cannot  con- 
ceive of  infinitude  in  any  form  ?  "  If  it  is  meant 
that  we  cannot  comprehend  the  infinite  as  to  its 
modes,  it  is  most  true;  but  if  it  means  that  we 
cannot  conceive  of  it  as  a  fact,  it  is  most  fallacious, 
for  it  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  the  opposite. 
We    cannot   conceive   of  space    and    duration  as 


The  Personality  of  God.  33 

necessarily  limited.  Assign  any  boundary  you 
please,  count  the  miles  by  millions,  billions,  and  tril- 
lions, at  each  step,  and  count  for  years,  and  when 
you  reach  the  boundary,  and  look  out  beyond, 
what  do  you  see  ?  Either  space  or  nothing,  infin- 
ite space  or  infinite  nothing,  but  still  the  infinite. 
And  so  with  duration  as  with  space.  Reason  will 
admit  of  no  terminus.  She  conceives  of  the  infin- 
ite and  goes  out  after  it  forever.  Her  home  is 
infinitude,  and  when  she  finds  her  God  and  shows 
him  to  us,  He  is  the  embodiment  of  it;  He  is 
clothed  with  it  as  with  a  garment,  and  all  his 
attributes  are  only  different  expressions  of  infini- 
tude. So  far  then  our  best-taught  reason  accepts 
the  creed  of  God  almighty,  maker  of  all  things 
visible  and  invisible, — accepts  this  creed  so  com- 
pletely that  if  we  admit  a  personal  deity  at  all  we 
cannot  conceive  of  him  as  anything  less  than 
infinite.  But  the  Christian  creed  has  added  an- 
other title, — "  Father."  Do  the  conclusions  we 
have  reached  justify  the  addition?     I  think  so. 

If  God  is  indeed  the  moral  archetype  of  his 
creature  man,  a  moral  personality  with  infinitude 
added,  then  every  moral  and  affectionate  perfec- 


34  Lecture  First. 


tion  may  be  affirmed  of  him.  If  he  is  infinitely 
righteous,  he  will  not  be  unjust  to  his  moral  crea- 
ture; if  he  is  good  in  the  same  measure,  he  will 
do  whatsoever  is  kind  and  gracious,  strong  to  help 
man's  weakness,  wise  to  correct  and  remedy  his 
foolishness,  kind  and  compassionate,  not  only  to 
relieve  his  wants,  but  to  forecast  the  human  need, 
both  of  body  and  soul,  and  to  establish  a  prov- 
idence that  shall  run  parallel  with  both.  In  a 
word,  the  idea  of  the  divine  fatherhood  acknowl 
edges  a  revelation  to  man  as  a  necessary  outcome 
of  his  justice  and  his  goodness.  It  admits  the  per- 
fect reasonableness  of  miracles;  it  enforces  the 
power  and  worth  of  prayer.  All  the  needs  of  the 
conscience,  the  heart,  the  soul  of  man  are  so  many 
specific  conclusions  that  God's  fatherhood  will 
prove  itself  true.  In  contemplating  these  needs 
we  get  a  better  view  of  that  fatherhood  than  we 
could  in  the  clear,  cool  heights  where  our  thoughts 
have  been  just  now  ranging. 

Our  souls  grasp  it  more  closely  when  we  bring 
it  down  from  that  high  light  which  is  the  life  of 
reason,  and  let  it  in  among  the  murky  things  of 
life,  to  walk  with  us  over  the  uneven  earth,  and 


The  Personality  of  God.  35 


enter  our  homes,  where  there  are  cares  and  trials 
and  fears  and  sorrows.  For  the  soul  must  have 
her  creed.  Our  reason  may  rejoice  to  claim  the 
personality  of  God  as  a  demonstrated  truth,  but 
the  soul  craves  the  fatherhood;  she  is  not  satisfied 
to  say,  I  believe  in  an  Almighty  Creator  of  heaven 
and  earth.  She  marks  the  missing  title,  "  Father," 
and  she  asks  with  anguish,  Is  there  no  love, 
no  care,  no  nurture  with  the  Almighty  for  his 
children  ? 

If  this  big  question  of  the  soul  were  not  met  to 
the  full,  what  a  grim  chimera  would  our  life  be, 
what  a  palace  of  ice  the  demonstration  of  a  God  ! 
The  soul  can  answer  her  own  longings  by  in- 
terpreting her  own  consciousness. 

If  I  am  in  his  image  he  will  not  reject  me.  He 
has  given  me  a  longing  after  a  perfect  bliss  that 
is  nowhere  else  but  with  him.  He  teaches  me  by 
my  earthly  loves  that  there  must  be  infinite  loveli- 
ness in  my  God.  Nay,  the  scientific  law  of  adapt- 
ation beautifully  foreshows  that  the  affinity  of  the 
human  with  the  Divine,  will  be  a  domestic  one, 
the  harmony  of  heaven  and  earth,  a  perfect  union. 
In  this  let  the  soul  rest,  interpreting  God  by  itself. 


36  Lecture  First. 


When  the  sense  of  sonship  aspires  after  God,  it  is 
because  the  fatherhood  is  bending  down  to  lift  the 
soul  to  itself.  When  the  soul  glows  with  love  and 
trust  it  is  the  reflex  of  the  Father's  tenderness 
beaming  down  upon  it. 

So  God's  Fatherhood  comes  into  the  life  of  man, 
walks  with  him,  talks  with  him,  shines  into  his 
darkness,  tempers  his  heats,  warms  his  coldness, 
and  shields  him  with  his  right  arm,  gives  peace  to 
die  with,  triumph  over  the  grave,  and  an  open 
heaven  where  reason,  soul,  and  conscience  shall 
see  the  personal  God,  and  say,  Abba  Father,  I  am 
satisfied.  Man's  destiny  blooms  into  bliss  from 
this  root  of  faith, — I  believe  in  God  the  Father 
Almighty,  Maker  of  heaven  and  earth,  and  of  all 
things  visible  and  invisible. 


\ 


LECTURE  II. 

THE    TRI-PERSONALITY   OF    GOD. 


LECTURE   II. 

THE  TRI-PERSONALITY  OF  GOD. 

MY  subject  to-night  is  " The  Doctrine  of  the 
Trinity."  I  well  know  the  effect  of  such 
an  announcement  upon  very  many  ears, — a  dry, 
abstract,  metaphysical  theme,  worn  worse  than 
threadbare  by  the  collisions  of  controversy  through 
all  the  ages;  an  unpractical  theme  besides,  and  not 
a  power  in  the  spiritual  life  begetting  freshness 
and  fruits.  Abstract  it  is,  no  doubt,  and  deep  and 
subtle  in  its  suggestions,  for  it  searches  the  skies 
and  beholds  God.  It  carries  the  mysterious  look 
of  that  half-transparent  haze  that  we  sometimes 
see  in  the  summer  firmament,  tinged  with  the  mel- 
low glory  of  the  midday  sun  and  suggesting  an 
infinite  depth  of  glory  beyond :  but  we  can  hardly 
say  it  is  an  unpractical  theme ;  we  cannot  say  so 

39 


40  Lecture  Second. 


of  any  truth  or  point  of  faith  which  has  concen- 
tred to  itself,  as  this  has,  all  the  other  beliefs  of 
the  Christian  creed  from  the  first  year  of  grace 
until  now. 

Nothing  can  be  more  striking  than  the  supremely 
affectionate  tenacity  with  which  the  generations 
of  Christians  have  clung  to  this  great  doctrine  as 
a  sort  of  "  be  all  and  end  all "  of  the  universal 
faith. 

While  the  many  minds  of  the  many  men  have 
run  into  diversity  on  the  other  points  of  belief  and 
some  into  wide  tangents  of  error,  there  have  been 
very  few  who  believed  in  Christianity  at  all  who 
have  broken  the  tether  that  held  them  heart  and 
soul  to  this  magnetic  centre  of  the  faith. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  even  this  doctrine  has 
not  been  perverted  and  even  denied.  Speculative 
and  rationalizing  minds  have  sometimes  so  ex- 
plained it  as  to  explain  it  away,  and  once  for  many 
years,  in  the  Gothic  period  of  the  Roman  empire,  an 
antagonistic  doctrine  did  so  prevail  as  to  threaten 
fatally  this  germ-power  of  the  faith.  The  invading 
barbarians,  in  accepting  from  their  conquered  foes 
their  religious  faith,  received  it  in  the  form  most 


The  Tri- Personality  of  God.  41 


nearly  level  with  their  mental  crndeness,  and  as 
it  was  said,  "  The  church  awoke  one  morning  and 
found  itself  Arian."  But  even  this  could  not  last. 
The  true  kingdom  of  God,  which  is  always  within, 
was  stronger  than  the  kingdom  of  the  world.  The 
indwelling  Christ  in  the  hearts  of  believers  was  a 
restorative  power  that  by  degrees  purged  out  the 
malaria  from  the  blood  and  body  of  the  church, 
and  brought  back  the  vigor  of  her  faith,  till  her 
strong  reclaim  established  once  more  the  belief 
of  the  Divine  Trinity  as  the  cardinal  truth  of 
the  Christian  system.  This  great  defection,  there- 
fore does  not  any  more  than  the  smaller  ones  dis- 
credit or  qualify  the  statement  that  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity  has  been  the  uniform  holding  of  the 
church.  They  have  each  and  all  been  local  and 
transient,  serving  only  as  occasions  to  bring  out 
into  fresh  assertion  the  primitive  truth,  which 
might  else  have  lost  its  brightness  and  edge. 

It  may  be  interesting,  I  have  thought,  to  track 
the  history  of  this  doctrine,  and  to  note  the  causes 
and  manner  of  its  development.  Development, 
I  say,  not  in  the  scientific  sense  of  evolution,  start- 
ing from  an  indifferent  atom  and  becoming  trans- 


42  Lecture  Seco?id. 


formed  into  all  possible  shapes;  the  development 
rather  of  a  living  thing,  a  plant  in  whose  seed  is 
the  potential  life  of  stalk  and  foliage  and  fruit,  ma- 
turing each  in  its  turn  as  the  months  go  by,  first  the 
blade,  then  the  ear,  after  that  the  full  corn  in  the 
ear. 

The  development  of  Divine  truth  is  such  as 
never  changes  its  seminal  character,  but  adapts 
itself  with  enlargements  to  suit  the  ever-new  ex- 
igencies in  the  lives  of  men  and  the  progress  of  soci- 
ety. We  see  this  beautifully  exhibited  in  the  faith 
of  the  early  church.  There  was  no  logical  statement 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  Those  early  be- 
lievers were  not  used  to  scientific  terms  or 
systematic  ideas.  Their  simple  faith  rested  in  the 
leadership  and  lordship  of  Jesus  Christ.  They 
had  accepted  him  as  the  all  in  all  of  their  soul's 
life  and  hope.  They  had  consecrated  their  whole 
selves  to  him,  living  and  dying.  Their  faith  in 
God  was  not  transferred  to,  but  centred  in  his  Son. 
God  was  hypostasized  to  their  minds  in  the  person 
of  the  Christ ;  for  in  the  revelation  of  the  Gospel 
God  had  so  set  forth  his  Son  as  the  author  of  their 
salvation,  planted  him  so  in  the  forefront  of  the 


The   Tri- Personality  of  God.  43 

great  redeeming  work,  that  when  they  looked  for 
a  redeemer  they  saw  only  him;  when  their  forgiven 
souls  would  embrace  their  deliverer,  they  clasped 
the  knees  of  Christ;  when  they  dedicated  their  re- 
stored and  grateful  hearts  to  him  to  whom  they 
owed  so  much,  it  took  the  form  of  loyal  love  and 
supreme  covenanted  allegiance  to  the  personal 
Jesus.  They  lived  for  him,  they  died  in  him,  and 
their  heavenly  hope  terminated  in  an  everlasting 
union  with  him.  Jesus  Christ  was  the  author  not 
only,  but  the  finisher  of  their  faith.  It  was  not 
idolatry,  for  they  knew  that  God  was  in  Christ, 
reconciling  them  to  himself;  and  knowing  this, 
they  were  jealous  of  any  statement  that  might  in- 
vade his  dignity  or  abate  the  assurance  of  their 
own  trust  and  hope. 

So  pre-eminent  was  this  belief  in  the  divinity  of 
Christ  among  the  early  Christians,  that  the  first 
error  that  enunciated  itself  was  the  denial  of  his 
humanity,  which  was  thought  to  derogate  from 
his  divinity,  maintaining  that  the  person  of  Jesus 
was  but  a  phantasm,  a  mere  form,  in  which  God 
disguised  himself  when  he  came  down  to  save  the 
world.     The  error  was  repressed,  not  so  much  by 


44  Lecture   Second. 


speculative  reasoning  as  by  the  Christian  con- 
sciousness of  the  church,  the  divine  common-sense, 
which  having*  been  begotten  with  the  new  life  of 
Christ  in  the  soul,  worked  like  an  inspiration  or  an 
instinct  to  recognize  the  truth  and  to  detect  in  the 
atmosphere  of  thought  the  slightest  taint  of  error 
upon  a  theme  so  vital  and  absorbing  as  the  divinely 
human  person  of  their  Lord  And  this  state  of 
things  lasted  through  several  generations. 

The  intellectual  strength  of  the  church,  such  as 
it  was,  was  mainly  engaged  in  vindicating  her 
truths  against  the  assaults  of  Jews  and  Pagans, 
and  during  this,  the  apologetic  period  of  her  his- 
tory, there  were  few  speculations  within  the 
church  touching  the  doctrines  of  the  faith.  Still, 
in  all  this  period,  although  there  was  small  occa- 
sion for  the  church  to  formulate  her  doctrines  in 
scientific  terms,  or  to  define  them  with  logical 
accuracy,  there  was  evidence  enough  of  the 
strength  and  constancy  of  her  faith  in  the  hymns 
and  liturgies  brought  down  from  the  earliest 
periods,  and  universally  used.  Hymns  and  litur- 
gies they  were,  surcharged  with  the  fragrance  of 
a  piety  that  centred  its  devoutest  worship  on  the 


The   Tri- Personality  of  God.  45 

divine  personality  of  Christ.  And  then  again 
there  was  the  surpassing  proof  of  suffering.  If 
the  early  church  gave  sometimes  only  an  equivocal 
testimony  to  Christ  in  the  party-colored  lives  of 
her  members,  gathered,  as  they  were,  from  among 
the  various  peoples  of  the  empire,  with  the  crust  of 
heathen  habits  not  yet  sloughed  off  from  their 
crude  piety ;  if  they  were  not  all  versed  in  the  cas- 
uistry of  a  daily  godliness, — they  were  at  least 
clear  and  stanch  enough  in  their  grand  holding  of 
Christ  to  give  up  their  lives  rather  than  to  deny  him. 
The  shortcomings  in  little  duties  might  throw  a 
suspicion  upon  their  reverence  for  their  Lord's  pre- 
cepts, but  their  endurance  unto  martyrdom  left  no 
question  of  their  surpassing  love  of  his  person  and 
their  supreme  trust  in  his  divine  salvation. 

Martyrdom,  therefore,  was  the  voice  of  the 
church's  faith  in  the  divinity  of  Christ.  The 
saintly  blood  that  saturated  the  arena,  and  flowed 
in  the  gutters  of  the  amphitheatre,  was  a  demon- 
stration of  the  primitive  creed  that  could  have 
borrowed  nothing  of  clearness  or  emphasis  from 
any  argument.  The  logic  of  dying  carried  not 
only  an  assertion  of  the  church's  faith,  but  a  proof 


46  Lecture  Second. 


of  its  truth  and  power  that  gained  thousands  of 
converts  to  the  divinity  of  Christ.  But  by  and  by, 
as  the  church  grew  towards  a  settled  and  secure 
condition,  the  minds  of  men  turned  more  towards 
the  analysis  of  the  creed.  It  was  then  only  a 
simple  formula,  probably  like  the  Apostles'  Creed 
as  we  now  have  it,  if  it  was  not  indeed  the  same, 
containing  nothing  more  than  a  recital  of  facts 
from  the  narrative  of  the  Bible.  Yet  each  fact  was 
the  investment  of  a  truth;  each  historic  statement 
bore  within  itself  a  divine  meaning;  and  the  minds 
of  men  set  themselves  to  eliminate  that  meaning, 
and  to  formulate  it  in  some  scientific  statement. 
Then  began  the  intellectual  gladiatorship,  which 
is  always  stirred  by  thinking  upon  deep  and  high 
themes.  The  apologetic  period  passed  into  the 
dogmatic.  The  faith  that  had  hitherto  been  a 
warm  instinct,  finding  its  sufficient  reinforcement 
in  the  spiritual  needs  of  a  driven  and  persecuted 
church,  was  now  called  upon  to  justify  itself  at 
the  tribunal  of  the  reasoning  powers.  The  main 
controversy  was  touching  the  divinity  of  Christ. 
The  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  his  personality 
and  agency,  was  not  as  yet  impugned;  neither  was 


The   Tri- Personality  of  God.  47 

it  necessary  to  defend  it  as  a  part  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  Trinity.  For  if  it  could  be  established  that 
the  person  of  the  Son  was  coequal  and  coeternal 
with  the  person  of  the  Father,  then  there  would 
be  proved  a  dual  oneness  in  the  Godhead  that 
silenced  the  speculative  objectors  to  the  Trinity. 
Because  if  the  oneness  of  the  Godhead  admits  of  a 
plurality  of  persons,  it  makes  no  difference  in  the 
reason  of  things  whether  that  plurality  be  two 
or  three.  When  the  rational  difficulty  of  any 
plurality  at  all  is  met  and  answered,  the  question, 
"  How  many  does  that  plurality  embrace  ?  "  is  a 
question  for  revelation  alone  to  determine. 

The  controversy  gathered  itself,  therefore,  ex- 
clusively about  the  question  of  the  proper  and 
personal  divinity  of  Christ.  It  was  a  warfare  of 
ingenious  and  subtile  reasoning  on  both  sides. 
The  profoundest  logic  and  the  keenest  metaphysi- 
cal distinctions  were  the  weapons  of  this  ethereal 
contest,  which  assumed  four  distinct  aspects  an- 
swering to  as  many  distinct  opinions  touching 
the  nature  and  person  of  Christ.  The  first 
opinion  denied  his  proper  divinity;  the  second 
denied  his  possession  of  a  human  soul,  and  main- 


48  Lecture  Second. 


tained  that  God  took  the  place  of  the  soul  in  the 
person  of  Christ;  the  third  affirmed  that  there  were 
two  distinct  persons  in  Christ,  divine  and  human; 
and  the  fourth  mingled  the  two  natures  of  Christ 
into  one.  These  four  errors  were  condemned  by 
the  church,  and  each  error  was  answered,  as 
Hooker  says,  by  a  single  word.  The  first,  which 
denied  that  Christ  was  God,  is  answered  by  the 
word  "  truly."  The  second,  that  denied  to  Christ 
a  perfect  humanity  from  the  absence  of  a  human 
soul,  is  met  by  the  word  "  perfectly."  The  third, 
that  divided  his  person  into  two,  by  the  adverb  "  in- 
divisibly,"  and  the  fourth  which  confounded  the  two 
natures  by  blending  them  in  one,  was  answered  by 
another  adverb,  ''distinctly."  "Truly,"  "perfectly," 
"  indivisibly,"  "  distinctly,"  that  is,  truly  God,  per- 
fectly man,  of  one  indivisible  personality,  and  of 
two  distinct  natures.  These  four  adverbs  denote, 
therefore,  the  four  aspects  of  the  doctrine  which, 
as  the  sides  of  a  square,  enclose  the  great  truth 
impregnably.  Every  assault  upon  the  doctrine 
must  make  its  approach  upon  one  or  another  of 
these  four  sides,  which  thus  complete  the  state- 
ment of  the  doctrine  and  exhaust  the  several  forms 


The   Tri- Personality  of  God.  49 

of  objection.  This  quadrilateral  intrenchment  of 
the  truth  was  accomplished  by  the  four  General 
Councils  of  the  church,  each  pronouncing  upon  one 
or  another  of  the  four  chief  heresies.  In  those 
councils  the  total  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  involv- 
ing the  distinct  personalities  of  the  Father,  the 
Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost  joined  together  in  the 
substantive  unity  of  the  divine  nature,  was  so  for- 
mulated by  precise  logical  terms,  sharp-lined  and 
clear,  that  the  crystalline  formation  has  lost  no 
fraction  of  its  meaning  to  this  day  nor  a  scintilla 
of  its  bright  truth.  Answering  the  speculations 
of  the  best  reason  of  man  with  the  deductions  of 
the  most  rational  logic,  it  left  no  careless  loop  for 
ingenuity  to  hang  a  doubt  on. 

As  we  trace  the  light  of  this  doctrine  back 
through  the  ages  of  faith  till  we  come  to  the 
period  of  its  first  systematic  statement,  it  stands 
out  from  the  background  of  revelation,  condensing 
the  diffusive  truth  into  one  luminous  body,  the 
fixed  exposition  of  the  mind  of  God. 

Thus  far,  you  will  observe,  I  have  not  entered 
into  the  Scriptural  evidence  of  this  great  doctrine. 
The  collection  of  texts  would  be  too  long  a  pro- 


50  Lecture  Second. 


cess  for  a  single  lecture.  Yet  I  cannot  help  ask- 
ing you  to  think  a  little  of  a  single  text,  which 
seems  to  me  a  sort  of  local  statement  of  the 
doctrine.  I  refer  to  the  baptismal  formula  drawn 
from  Christ's  last  commission  to  his  apostles:  "Go 
ye,  teach  all  nations,  baptizing  them  in  the  name 
of  the  Father  and  of  the  Son  and  of  the  Holy 
Ghost." 

Remembering  the  occasion  of  these  words,  they 
bear  a  very  peculiar  significance.  They  were  the 
ministerial  charter  of  authority  and  the  guide-book 
of  ministerial  responsibility.  What  Christ  said  to 
his  disciples  in  his  parting  words  must  bear  a 
weighty  meaning.  As  baptismal  words,  they  in- 
stitute the  sacrament  of  initiation  into  his  church. 
Chiselled  on  the  portico  of  the  Christian  temple,  their 
meaning  must  be  the  alphabetical  truth  of  his 
religion.  Every  man  or  woman  or  child  must 
adopt  these  words  as  the  confession  of  his  faith, — 
"  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost." 

Let  us  see  what  truth  is  garnered  up  into  this 
formula  of  words.  And  first  examine  the  formula 
itself  as  a  simple  question  of  grammatical  con- 
struction, "  In  the  name  of  the  Father  and  of  the 


The   Tr i- Personality  of  God.  51 

Son  and  of  the  Holy  Ghost."  Here  is  a  noun  in 
the  singular  number,  the  word,  "  name,"  and  then 
there  are  three  different  titles  denoting  as  many 
distinct  personalities;  and  the  word  "name"  in 
the  singular  is  made  to  comprehend  the  three 
several  titles  as  if  they  were  together  summed  up 
in  that  one  name.  The  unit  and  the  triplet  are 
identical  in  force  and  value.  Now  this  relation  is 
not  changed  when  we  turn  the  abstraction  into  a 
personality;  as  the  comprehensive  name  which 
takes  in  the  three  titles  is  the  name  of  God,  so  the 
three  personalities  denoted  by  the  titles  are  per- 
sonalities of  God,  and  thus  the  God  of  our  baptism 
is  a  triune  Jehovah.  But  leaving  the  grammati- 
cal sense  of  the  baptismal  formula,  let  us  see  what 
light  is  shed  upon  our  subject  by  the  nature  and 
use  of  the  baptism  itself. 

Baptism  is  the  form  of  a  covenant  between  the 
two  parties,  God  and  man,  in  which  each  party 
assumes  a  distinct  responsibility  and  obligation. 
On  the  part  of  God,  it  is  the  obligation  of  grace 
and  salvation.  On  the  part  of  man,  it  is  self-con- 
secration and  obedience.  We  may  look  at  it  both 
on  its  divine  and  the  human  side.     The  interpre- 


52  Lecture  Second. 

tation  of  its  divine  side  is  this  :  all  the  blessing  of 
the  covenant,  forgiveness  of  sin,  regeneration  of 
the  soul,  the  indwelling  of  God,  spiritual  strength 
and  victory  to  be  crowned  in  Heaven.  These  are 
the  pledged  gifts  of  baptism  to  every  faithful  re- 
ceiver. But  we  ask,  "  In  whose  name,  on  what 
authority,  are  these  matchless  promises  made  ? " 
In  the  one  name,  by  the  one  authority,  of  the 
Father  and  of  the  Son  and  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  But 
these  gifts  are  all  divine,  the  bestowment  of  God 
alone.  It  cannot  be,  then,  that  either  of  the  cov- 
enanting persons  is  less  than  divine.  The  Son 
cannot  be  a  creature  born  in  time,  if  he  bestows 
creative  and  eternal  gifts.  The  Holy  Ghost  must 
be  more  than  an  influence,  a  breath,  an  imperson- 
ality, if  it  can  work  the  most  illustrious  works  of 
God. 

And  so  I  infer  that  since  the  covenant  is  one 
and  the  authority  one,  and  since  the  covenanting 
powers  must  be  personal,  there  must  be  a  sense  in 
which  the  distinct  personalities  must  be  joined  in 
one  substance  of  unity.  The  God  of  baptism  must 
be  triune. 

Look  now  at  the  human  side  of  the  baptismal 


The   Tri- Personality  of  God.  53 

sacrament.  The  believing  person  is  baptized  in 
the  one  name.  To  him  who  bears  that  name  he 
makes  confession  of  his  guilt,  proclaims  the  grat- 
itude of  forgiveness.  Him  he  avouches  to  be 
henceforward  the  sovereign  of  his  heart  and  life; 
renouncing  all  other  conflicting  loves,  all  repug- 
nant service,  all  other  worship,  he  dedicates  himself 
to  his  acceptance. 

Lost,  but  redeemed  by  Him,  guilty,  but  by  Him 
forgiven,  sinful  in  grain,  but  now  by  Him  regen- 
erated, he  brings  his  whole  rescued  nature  and 
lays  it  on  the  altar  consecrated  to  the  one  great 
baptismal  name,  and  that  name  Father,  Son,  and 
Holy  Ghost.  And  the  same  importunate  question 
comes  round  to  the  human  side,  Who  are  Father, 
Son,  and  Holy  Ghost  ?  Am  I  to  pay  a  sovereign 
and  equal  loyalty  to  the  eternal  Father,  to  a  crea- 
ture, and  to  a  breath,  an  influence,  the  shadow  of  a 
shade?  Is  my  faith  to  be  distributed  among 
beings  of  such  different  make  and  nature,  and  my 
supremest  love  and  adoration  divided  and  degrad- 
ed ?  Is  this  what  I  mean  in  my  baptism  ?  It  were 
idolatry  to  do  so.  If  I  must  render  to  the  three 
persons   a  divine   consecration,  then   those   three 


54  Lecture  Second, 

must  be  alike  divine.  If  I  must  bow  to  them  alike 
under  one  sacred  name,  there  must  be  a  sense  in 
which  the  three  are  one,  and  the  God  of  my  bap- 
tism is  triune.  I  do  not  see  why  the  force  of  this 
reasoning  is  not  conclusive,  and  interpreting  the 
baptismal  text  by  its  grammatical  structure  and 
its  religious  purpose,  it  seems  to  contain  in  itself 
the  necessary  recognition  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity, — three  distinct  personalities  joined  with 
equal  power  and  glory  in  one  essential  nature  of 
Godhead. 

This  is  the  substance  of  the  doctrine  as  it  was 
adjusted  and  set  forth  by  the  four  General  Coun- 
cils, in  refutation  of  all  the  opposing  theories  that 
had  come  into  birth  during  two  centuries  of  the 
church's  life.  And  this  declaration  seems  to  have 
been  accepted  as  a  finality  and  treasured  as  a 
priceless  legacy  by  all  the  Christian  generations 
since.  It  has  entered  into  the  creed  of  every  con- 
siderable organization  of  Christians  to  this  day. 
The  Eastern  and  the  Western  churches,  and  every 
Protestant  church  that  has  embodied  its  faith  in  a 
symbol,  have  clung  to  the  doctrine  as  the  spinal 
column  of  the  whole  body  of  Christian  belief,  upon 


The  Tri- Personality  of  God.  55 

which  depended  the  value  and  vigor  of  every  other 
tenet.  In  all  this  lapse  of  time  none  of  the  errors 
that  teased  the  early  church  have  recovered  from 
the  buffet  of  the  four  councils,  except  two,  the 
Arian  and  the  Sabellian  theories.  These  two,  be- 
ing less  speculative  than  the  rest,  more  level  to  the 
common  apprehension  of  men,  would  hold  their 
grasp  the  longest,  and  seize  the  first  occasion  of 
religious  thinking  to  cast  aside  their  grave-clothes 
and  come  forth  in  a  resurrection  form. 

The  Arian  heresy  consisted  in  the  absolute  de- 
nial of  the  deity  of  Christ.  And  although  the  ut- 
most that  Arius  ever  affirmed  was  that  there  was 
a  period  when  the  Son  of  God  was  not,  yet  the 
sensitive  perceptions  of  the  early  Christians  dis- 
cerned quickly  the  falsity  and  mischief  that  were 
disguised  in  this  gentle  negation,  and  immediately 
rose  in  conflict.  The  controversy  was  virulent  and 
widely  spread.  The  Church  was  shaken  by  it. 
The  Arian  opinion  was  so  simple  that  it  might 
easily  satisfy  the  minds  of  the  common  and  uncul- 
tured class,  who  were  inapt  and  impatient  at  sub- 
tile distinctions  of  thought,  and  so  rational  as  to 
suit  that  other  class,  always  to  be  found  in  cultivated 


56  Lecture  Second. 


society,  whose  chief  worship  is  paid  to  the  sover- 
eignty of  intellect,  who  would  bring  divine  truth 
within  the  jurisdiction  of  reason,  and  summon  even 
the  deep  things  of  God  to  justify  themselves  at  the 
bar  of  common-sense.  Arianism,  therefore,  was  a 
formidable  power  of  error,  which  had  to  be  met 
and  refuted  by  the  gathered  authority  of  the 
church. 

The  first  General  Council,  assembled  at  Nicea  in 
a.  d.  325,  gave  such  point-blank  denial  to  the  Arian 
position  as  to  shut  it  out  forever  from  the  citadel 
of  the  Catholic  faith. 

"  God  of  God,  light  of  light,  very  God  of  very 
God,  begotten  not  made,  being  of  one  substance 
with  the  Father,"  were  words  of  august  authority, 
that  uttered  the  death-warrant  of  Arianism  within 
the  church. 

And  although  it  has  reappeared  again  and  again 
in  its  own  form  and  in  the  derived  and  cognate 
forms  of  Semiarianism,  Unitarianism,  and  human- 
itarianism,  it  has  always  been  as  an  assailant  from 
the  outside,  and  has  never  ventured  to  claim  the 
sanction  of  Catholic  approval;  so  that  while  it  may 
claim  among  its  adherents   characters  as  exalted 


The  Tri- Personality  of  God.  $7 


and  lives  as  pure  as  that  of  Arius  himself,  with 
beliefs  so  reverent  and  trustful  as  to  challenge  our 
highest  respect,  yet  its  extreme  indulgence  of 
reason  has  begotten  much  lower  forms  of  belief, 
until  we  can  count  the  steps  in  the  ladder  of  de- 
clension, from  the  highest  form  of  Arian  belief 
down  to  the  disbelief  of  any  supernatural  element 
in  the  Bible,  a  total  denial  of  its  inspiration,  claim- 
ing the  religion  of  the  absolute  as  the  ultimate 
reach  of  reason  and  the  only  true  faith  for  mankind. 
But  besides  the  Arian  error,  I  mentioned  the 
Sabellian  as  having  survived  the  period  of  the 
councils,  and  reappearing  in  modern  forms. 

The  error  of  Sabellius  differed  from  that  of  Ari- 
us by  a  whole  diameter ;  for  while  Arius  could  not 
but  hold  the  personality  of  the  Son  of  God,  since 
he  believed  him  to  be  a  creature,  Sabellius,  on  the 
other  hand,  maintained  his  divinity  and  denied  his 
distinct  personality.  He  held  that  God  subsisted 
only  in  one  personality,  and  that  in  his  relations 
with  man  he  acted  in  three  distinct  lines  or  func- 
tions or  methods,  and  in  each  of  these  functions  or 
methods  he  assumed  a  distinct  and  descriptive 
title.     As  the  supreme  administrator  of  the  world 


5  8  Lecture  Second. 


he  bore  the  title  of  Father;  whenever  he  would 
make  manifestations  of  himself  to  man  he  assumed 
the  name  of  Son;  and  whenever  he  would  bring 
his  power  to  bear  in  the  way  of  efficient  agency 
upon  man's  life  and  soul,  he  was  called  the  Holy 
Ghost.  God  the  sovereign,  enthroned  amidst  the 
reserve  of  his  majesty,  God  the  manifester,  coming 
into  incarnation,  and  God  the  regenerator  and 
sanctifier  of  the  human  soul,  were  only  three  dis- 
tinct aspects  of  the  one  personality  of  God.  There 
were  others,  both  before  and  after  Sabellius,  who 
held  opinions  differing  only  slightly  from  his,  and 
of  whom,  therefore,  he  is  a  fair  representative.  It 
is  easy  to  see  how  widely  and  easily  his  doctrines 
would  find  acceptance  in  the  church.  By  recog- 
nizing the  full  divinity  of  the  Son  and  of  the  Holy 
Ghost,  he  satisfied  the  hearts  of  that  devout  multi- 
tude whose  faith  and  love  had  centred  on  a  Saviour 
God,  but  whose  reasoning  powers  were  untrained 
in  logical  distinctions.  Their  hearts  and  souls  had 
taught  them  by  a  delighted  experience  of  his  grace 
that  their  Christ  was  divine,  and  they  had  not 
enough  of  dialectic  skill  and  acumen  to  trace  out 
the  vicious  consequence  of  denving  his  separate 


The  Tri- Personality  of  God.  59 

personality.  Yet  it  requires  no  long  thought  to 
discover  the  sinister  bearing  of  this  view  upon  the 
doctrine  of  Christ's  atonement. 

It  seems  plain  that  if  the  Son  of  God  be  only  one 
aspect  of  the  Father's  person,  the  atonement  for 
human  guilt  was  made  by  the  Father  to  himself, 
— an  incongruity  that  carries  its  own  refutation. 
There  could  be,  then,  no  atonement  in  its  sense  of 
substitution,  or  in  any  sense  beyond  that  of 
moral  suasion  or  a  pure  example  or  a  pathetic 
martyrdom.  There  could  be  no  high-priestly  in- 
tercession at  the  mercy-seat  above  for  the  strug- 
gling souls  of  the  redemption. 

The  utmost  of  the  work  of  Christ  would  be  to 
tell  mankind  that  he  was  their  Father,  who  had 
come  down  to  assure  them  of  his  fatherhood,  that 
he  loved  them  like  a  father,  pitied  their  moral 
weakness,  and  would  by  no  means  judge  them  se- 
verely if  they  would  try  to  do  as  he  should  tell 
them.  There  is  not  enough  in  a  doctrine  like  this 
to  meet  the  wants  of  a  soul  profoundly  in  earnest, 
looking  first  at  its  own  low  proclivities,  and  then 
looking  at  God  in  the  white  splendor  of  his  holi- 
ness,  a  soul  possessed   by  a  conscious   guiltiness 


6o  Lecture  Second. 


that  condemns  itself,  and  insists  on  being  pun- 
ished. 

While,  therefore,  the  doctrine  of  Arius  evacu- 
ated the  Atonement  of  its  value,  Christ  being  only 
a  creature,  the  doctrine  of  Sabellius  stripped  it  of 
its  meaning  and  resolved  it  into  only  a  method  of 
moral  influence.  This  theory  did  not  die  with  the 
mob  of  errors  to  which  the  councils  gave  the  death- 
blow, but  its  reproductive  power  lived  along  with 
that  of  Arius,  a  seed-power,  torpid  for  awhile,  like 
the  grains  of  wheat  in  the  cerements  of  an  Egyp- 
tian mummy,  waiting  only  for  an  opening  occasion 
to  sprout  and  bear  fruit. 

Accordingly,  in  modern  times,  Sabellianism  has 
had  a  fresh  birth ;  first,  in  Germany,  where  it  met 
the  crazy  rationalism  of  the  times  and  grafted  its 
philosophy  upon  the  religion  of  the  Bible.  It  was 
not  difficult  to  do  so,  for  the  idea  of  some  sort  of 
trinity  in  the  Godhead  was  not  strange  to  the  old 
philosophies.  Both  the  Hindoo  and  the  Platonic 
trinities  had  entered  as  elements  into  the  ancient 
systems  of  thought,  and  were,  therefore,  respect- 
able from  their  pedigree.  Thus  Sabellianism  had 
an  authentic  philosophical  footing,  which  kept  it 


The  Tri- Personality  of  God.  61 

from  being  despised ;  and  inasmuch  as  it  set  forth 
only  a  modal  Trinity  and  avoided  the  puzzling 
dogma  of  three  persons  joined  in  one  substance  of 
nature,  its  presentment  of  God  had  a  look  no 
worse  than  of  a  religious  philosophy,  that  is,  a  phil- 
osophy that  had  not  so  much  of  religion  as  to 
spuil  it. 

From  Germany,  the  system  has  crossed  the 
water  to  England  and  thence  to  America,  where 
it  lives  a  popular  and  advancing  life,  suiting  itself 
to  the  class  of  clerical  minds  who  sympathize  with 
the  progressive  spirit  of  the  age,  and  whose  young 
ambition  is  tinged  with  intellectuality.  The  fol- 
lowers of  Sabellius  do  indeed  maintain  that  their 
doctrine  is  not  forbidden  by  the  church.  They 
claim  that  the  dogmatic  teaching  of  the  Nicene 
creed  does  not  bar  them  out  from  the  fold  of  the 
Orthodox  faith,  because,  while  that  creed  exhausts 
the  very  life-blood  of  Arianism  in  proclaiming  the 
full  divinity  of  the  Son  of  God,  it  has  no  clause 
that  asserts  his  separate  personality.  Hence  its 
doctrine  of  a  modal  Trinity  is  not  a  heresy.  This 
would  seem  to  be  at  first  view  a  plausible  claim. 
It  is  not  until  we  refer  to  the  Athanasian  creed 


62  Lecture  Second. 


that  Sabellianism  meets  with  an  explicit  rebuke. 
In  that  creed,  the  most  perfect  model  of  dogmatic 
statement  that  the  world  has  ever  seen,  the  doc- 
trine of  the  tri-personality  of  the  Godhead  is  stated 
in  terms  so  full  and  with  such  discrimination  of 
thought  as  seem  to  render  a  mistake  impossible. 
Its  form  is  not  only  inclusive,  but  exclusive  as 
well.  Its  declarations  are  antithetical,  balanced 
by  an  affirmation  on  one  hand  and  a  negation  on 
the  other;  not  only  asserting  the  doctrine  but  de- 
nying in  terms  its  opposite;  showing  both  what  it 
means  and  what  it  does  not  mean  at  a  single 
glance. 

That  Creed,  therefore,  has  ever  been  held  to  be 
the  best  fortified  bulwark  of  the  Faith,  and,  in 
every  church  that  receives  it  as  authority,  the  Sa- 
bellian  belief  must  be  content  to  hold  the  place  of 
a  tolerated  error.  Our  own  Church,  by  declining 
to  admit  it  as  one  of  her  standards,  has  left  a  some- 
what open  field  for  the  followers  of  Sabellius  to 
disport  their  unshackled  thoughts.  If  their  theory 
be  not  arrested  and  rebuked  by  other  recognitions 
of  the  Trinity  in  the  devotional  and  liturgical  ex 
prefisions  of  the  Church,  there  would  seem  to  be 


The  Tri- Personality  of  God.  63 

nothing  in  the  logical  construction  of  her  creeds 
to  convict  the  other  doctrine  as  illegitimate. 

The  objections  in  our  day  to  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  are  somewhat  different  from  those  of  the 
early  times,  because  they  spring  from  psychologi- 
cal reasoning,  a  species  of  thinking  unknown  to 
their  philosophies.  From  this  source  comes  the 
main  objection  that  the  doctrine  of  the  tri-person- 
ality  of  God  is  contradicted  by  the  essential  idea 
of  personality,  and  is  therefore  necessarily  incon- 
ceivable and  false.  The  essence  of  personality,  it 
is  said,  is  self-consciousness,  the  consciousness  of 
being  itself  and  not  another;  its  function  is  to  cre- 
ate the  sense  of  separateness  and  individuality  and 
the  exclusion  of  all  other  individualities. 

Now,  the  doctrine  of  tri-personality  contradicts 
this  elementary  self-consciousness;  it  asserts  that 
the  three  personalities  are  one  personality,  which 
is  to  declare  that  three  units  are  one  and  the  same 
unit,  which  is  absurd.  If  we  reply  that  the  doc- 
trine does  not  take  the  shape  of  saying  three  per- 
sons in  one  person,  but  three  persons  in  one  Divine 
nature,  then  the  objector  asks,  What  is  that  Divine 
nature  ?     Is  it  too  a  personality  ?     If  so,  there  are 


64  Lecture  Second. 


four  personalities,  not  three  only;  and  if  it  be  not 
a  personality,  but  only  a  nature,  an  unknown 
something,  then  the  three  persons  are  independent 
beings  and  the  system  is  a  Tritheism.  What  shall 
we  say  to  this  keen  and  trenchant  objection,  that 
pierces  to  the  heart  of  the  doctrine  and  cuts  in 
twain  the  silver  cord  of  its  vitality  V 

As  the  objection  is  an  aggressive  one,  the  answer 
needs  be  only  defensive.  As  it  makes  a  positive 
charge  of  inconceivability  and  necessary  absurdity, 
the  charge  is  sufficiently  repelled  and  the  doctrine 
vindicated  by  a  negative.  Does  the  idea  of  three 
distinct  personal  consciousnesses  conflict  fatally 
with  the  idea  of  the  unity  of  those  personalities  in 
one  nature  ?  Can  any  way  be  shown  to  the  eye 
of  reason  in  which  they  may  conceivably  be  joined 
in  a  unity  of  essence  without  the  logical  crea- 
tion of  a  fourth  personal  consciousness?  In  ad- 
vance of  further  argument,  let  me  say  that  per- 
haps our  conclusion  may  depend  somewhat  upon 
the  direction  in  which  our  minds  address  the 
subject. 

When  the  idea  of  the  Trinity  is  propounded  as  a 
philosophical  theme,  we  naturally  begin  our  think- 


The  Tri- Personality  of  God.  65 

ing  at  the  nearest  terminus  of  thought,  and  reason 
back  to  the  beginning.  We  think  first  of  the  sev- 
eral personalities,  and  then  proceed  to  join  the 
severalities  into  unity,  which,  after  all,  is  only  an 
aggregation  of  units,  to  which  we  find  it  difficult 
to  ascribe  any  subsistence  of  its  own.  The  connec- 
tion seems  arbitrary  and  artificial,  a  union  rather 
than  a  unity.  The  doctrine  thus  takes  on  the 
look  of  tritheism, — the  three  personalities  joined 
by  affinity,  and  not  by  constitutional  and  essential 
oneness.  Supposing,  however,  that  we  begin  to 
think  at  the  remoter  terminus,  and  let  the  concep- 
tion be  of  the  Godhead  as  eternally  subsisting  in 
a  triple  form,  not  compounded  of  three  personal- 
ities, but  as  being  never  anything  else  than  three. 
The  unity  does  not  then  appear  as  a  junction  of 
separate  subsistences,  but  its  very  constitution  and 
essence  is  that  of  a  triple  subsistence, — an  idea 
which  seems  to  me  not  beyond  the  reach  of  ration- 
al conception.  If  there  be  a  difficulty  of  think- 
ing this,  is  not  the  difficulty  one  of  ignorance 
rather  than  of  reason,  the  same  that  besets  all 
our  thoughts  of  the  Divine  subsistence,  or  of 
any  other  being  or  thing,  which   makes  even  a 


66  Lecture  Second. 


blade  of  grass  an  enigma,  and  the  whole  world 
a  huge,  solemn  mystery  ? 

But  now  let  us  try  to  meet  distinctly  the  ob- 
jection that  if  there  be,  besides  the  three  per- 
sonal consciousnesses,  another  consciousness  of  the 
Divine  nature  itself,  then  the  four  consciousnesses 
are  equivalent  to  four  Gods  and  not  three  in  one. 
As  the  whole  objection  grounds  itself  in  our  human 
psychology,  let  us  get  our  reply  from  the  same 
source  and  take  our  human  consciousness  as  the 
basis  of  thought. 

Mankind  subsists  to-day  as  twelve  hundred 
millions  of  distinct  personalities,  each  personality 
having  its  distinct  consciousness  of  being  itself  and 
not  another;  yet  all  these  personalities  spring  from 
the  one  ground  of  nature  which  we  call  humanity, 
binding  those  personalities  together  in  a  character- 
istic unity  which  distinguishes  them  from  all  other 
natures,  from  brute  to  angelic. 

Each  one  of  the  personalities  contains  the 
whole  power  and  character  of  human  nature  as 
truly  and  essentially  as  if  it  were  the  only  human 
being  in  existence.  Human  nature  would  not  be 
different,  would  not  be  less,  if  there  were  only  one 


The  Tri- Personality  of  God.  67 

person  to  represent  it.  The  plurality  of  persons, 
therefore,  does  not  destroy  the  unity  of  nature. 
This  will  of  course  be  easily  admitted,  but  it  will 
probably  be  asked,  "  Is  there  any  consciousness  in 
this  nature  itself?  the  consciousness  namely  among 
the  several  persons  of  being  joined  together  by 
this  common  bond  ?  "  "  Is  there  mingled  with  the 
personal  consciousness,  which  is  the  consciousness 
of  separateness,  another  consciousness,  which  is 
the  consciousness  of  unity  ?  "  I  think  there  is. 
Else  what  is  the  meaning  of  the  universal  sense  of 
brotherhood  ?  What  is  that  touch  of  nature  that 
makes  the  whole  world  kin  ?  What  is  that  native 
sympathy  that  we  feel  for  the  trials  and  sorrows  of 
mankind,  though  far  away  ?  Why  do  our  hearts  sink 
at  their  debasement  or  our  blood  boil  at  their  wrongs? 
Why  does  any  distressed  man  make  appeal  with  a 
sort  of  confidence  to  the  generic  feelings  of  human 
nature?  Why  does  the  skilful  orator  address 
himself  so  surely  to  those  generic  feelings  to  gain 
his  cause  ?  Why  is  it  that  companions  find  them- 
selves so  often  interpreting  each  other's  silent 
feelings,  anticipating  each  other's  wishes,  or  utter- 
ing at  the  same  moment  precisely  the  same  senti- 


68  Lecture  Second. 


merits  ?  Does  not  this  world-known  fact  imply  an 
underlying  consciousness  of  unity  perfectly  com- 
patible with  the  individual  consciousness  of  per- 
sonality ?  If  so,  it  seems  to  me  we  have  analogy 
enough  to  warrant  the  idea  of  a  similar  constitu- 
tion of  the  Divine  nature. 

Supposing  only  the  difference  of  degree  between 
man  and  God;  supposing  these  facts  of  our  life  to 
be  translated  into  the  ineffable  conditions  of  God's 
life;  supposing,  in  a  word,  that  man,  made  in  the 
image  of  God,  is  a  type,  no  matter  how  lame  and 
feeble,  of  the  great  archetype  of  infinitude,  may 
we  not  suppose  that  the  Divine  nature  may  still 
be  distributed  into  personalities  without  losing  its 
deity,  and  at  the  same  time  may  hold  in  itself  a 
consciousness  of  itself,  which  is  incorporated  with 
the  consciousness  of  each  personality,  pervading 
each  so  intimately  that  with  each  consciousness 
of  separateness  there  will  be  blended  the  insepar- 
able and  intense  consciousness  of  unity  ?  This 
supposition  seems  to  me  perfectly  conceivable  and 
answering  the  essential  requirements  of  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Trinity;  and  if  only  conceivable,  it 
meets  the  objection  we  are  dealing  with  of  impos- 


The   Tri- Personality  of  God.  69 

sibility  and  contradiction.  If  conceivable,  it  is  not 
irrational,  and  if  not  irrational  it  may  be  true. 
Thus,  then,  I  think  the  doctrine  stands  secure  from 
the  assaults  of  human  reason,  even  as,  by  the  con- 
fessions of  the  universal  church,  it  is  the  fixed 
truth  of  revelation.  It  justifies  itself  to  our  ac- 
ceptance in  that  not  only  does  the  earnest  disciple 
cling  to  it  with  his  heart,  and  not  only  the  pro- 
longed strain  of  Christian  consciousness  has  made 
this  truth,  with  its  dependent  truths,  the  burden 
of  its  teaching  and  its  song,  but  in  that  our  sov- 
ereign reason  can  muster  no  effective  weapons 
against  it,  but,  standing  face  to  face  with  the  pos- 
sibility, can  only  adore  the  glory  of  its  mystery  in 
the  divine  Three  in  One.  And  this  is  no  skeleton 
truth:  it  is  clothed  with  the  teguments  and  filled 
with  the  vitality  of  a  practical,  spiritual  power. 

Perhaps  it  is  safe  to  say  that,  as  it  has  been  the 
stay  and  staff  of  the  highest  religious  life,  so  with- 
out it  there  had  been  no  abiding  Universal  Church. 
It  would  be  an  interesting  work  to  show  the 
practical  importance  of  this  great  truth  in  detail, 
to  trace  its  bearings  on  other  revealed  truths, — 
how  it  works  itself  in  essentially  with  the  atonement 


JO  Lecture  Second. 

of  the  God-man,  how  it  brightens  into  life  in  the 
agency  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  Comforter,  and  how- 
it  thus  exalts  the  whole  Christian  experience  to  a 
higher  plane  in  its  faith,  its  comforts,  its  strength, 
and  its  assured  victory. 

But  the  limits  of  our  time  forbid  such  expatia- 
tion.  I  can  only  suggest  that  each  Christian  may 
educe  this  rich  development  in  his  own  personal 
consciousness,  and  close  with  the  invocation  that 
the  grace  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the  Eternal 
Son,  the  love  of  God,  the  Father,  and  the  fellow- 
ship of  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  Comforter,  may  be 
with  us  all,  now  and  evermore.     Amen  ! 


LECTURE  III. 

THE     ATONEMENT 


LECTURE  III. 

THE    ATONEMENT. 

OUR  theme  to-night  is  the  doctrine  of  the 
atonement  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  Al- 
though we  cannot,  by  searching,  find  out  God,  or  un- 
derstand the  Almighty  to  perfection,  yet  when  he 
himself  leaves  hanging  out  from  the  deep  sanctuary 
where  he  dwells  loops  of  suggestion  to  fasten  our 
thoughts  upon,  our  minds  will  seize  them  and  try  to 
climb  up  into  the  mystery  of  the  meaning  of  things ; 
and  although  these  suggestions  be  only  partial  and 
fragmentary,  they  may  serve  to  show  oftentimes 
what  that  meaning  is  not,  though  they  fail  to 
disclose  its  full  interior  force.  That  the  word  of 
God  ascribes  to  the  death  of  Christ  an  efiicacy  and 
importance  belonging  to  the  death  of  no  other  per- 
son, there  is  of  course  no  question.     It  stands  out 


74  Lecture   TJiird. 


in  history,  with  its  associated  facts,  a  perfectly 
unique  fact,  and  its  spiritual  significance  is  no  less 
sublimely  singular.  That  significance  is  that  the 
immortal  well-being  of  our  race  depends  absolutely 
upon  the  fact  that  Jesus  Christ  died.  That  the 
human  soul  could  be  saved  only  through  Christ, 
was  the  alphabetical  faith  of  Christianity;  that 
salvation  was  in  consequence  of  Christ's  dying, 
was  the  next  step  of  supplementary  belief. 

In  this  simple  form  it  became  the  heritage  of 
the  generations  for  two  hundred  years.  The  church 
was  not  in  a  condition  to  deal  with  theological 
reasonings.  The  dogmatic  period  had  not  come 
in.  The  company  of  believers  had  all  that  they 
could  do  to  live:  to  give  a  reason  to  their  pagan 
enemies  why  they  should  live  was  often  beyond 
their  mental  competency.  In  multitudes  of  in- 
stances they  could  only  say,  "  I  believe,"  and  then 
die.  Perhaps  we  can  measure  the  extent  of  their 
faith  in  Christ's  atonement  from  the  instance  of 
Philip  and  the  Eunuch  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles. 
The  Eunuch  was  reading  from  the  Prophet  Isaiah, 
"  He  was  led  as  a  lamb  to  the  slaughter,  and  as 
tUe  sheep  before  her  shearer  is  dumb,  so  opened 


The  Atonement.  75 


he  not  his  mouth."  The  context  of  these  words  is, 
He  hath  borne  our  griefs  and  carried  our  sorrows. 
He  was  wounded  for  our  transgressions,  he  was 
bruised  for  our  iniquities ;  the  chastisement  of  our 
peace  was  upon  him,  and  by  his  stripes  we  are 
healed.  "  Of  whom  speaketh  the  Prophet  this," 
said  the  Eunuch,  "of  himself  or  of  some  other 
man  ?  "  Then  Philip  began  at  the  same  place,  and 
preached  unto  him  Jesus, — Jesus,  as  the  fulfilment 
of  that  stirring  prophecy,  suffering,  but  not  for 
himself,  innocent  of  all  wrong  but  bearing  the  sins 
of  many,  wounded  and  bruised  like  a  criminal,  not 
for  his  own  transgression,  but  for  ours.  The 
Eunuch  accepted  this  gospel,  was  baptized  in  its 
faith,  and  went  on  his  way  rejoicing.  It  was 
gospel  enough  for  the  salvation  of  a  world,  and 
the  faith  of  the  simple  fact  of  Christ's  death  could 
transform  the  unhappy  heart  of  sin  into  a  fountain 
of  peace  and  joy.  The  essential  element  of  this 
belief  lay  in  the  vicariousness  of  Christ's  suffering. 
Whatever  he  endured  was  as  a  substitute  for  sin- 
ners. Believing  this,  they  asked  not  how  or  why ; 
they  rested  in  no  formula  of  words,  but  in  the  per- 
sonal, divine,  dying  Christ,  whose  death  was  their 


j6  Lecture   Third. 


life.  By  this  they  lived  and  died.  But  when  the 
dogmatic  period  dawned,  the  Church  began  to 
think  out  explanations  and  to  form  theories  of  the 
Atonement,  and  in  doing  so  they  would  pitch  upon 
some  word  of  Scripture  which  signified  the  charac- 
ter of  the  Atonement,  and  that  word  would  be  made 
the  germ  point  of  a  theory.  There  were  many 
such  words,  and  each  one  denoted  a  distinct  aspect 
of  the  atoning  work. 

Redemption,  mediation,  sacrifice,  purchase,  pro- 
pitiation, ransom, — a  theory  built  on  either  of  these 
words  alone  was  pretty  sure  to  run  into  some  im- 
practicable conclusion;  and  even  to  join  them 
together  was  to  make  the  theory  loose-jointed  and 
incongruous.  These  descriptive  words  all  agreed, 
however,  in  one  essential  meaning ;  they  all  denoted 
something  done  by  one  person  for  and  in  behalf 
of  another  person;  the  element  of  vicariousness 
was  wrapped  up  in  them  all.  Of  these  suggestive 
words  the  word  "  ransom  "  seems  to  have  seized 
the  minds  of  the  age  the  earliest.  They  knew 
what  ransom  meant,  the  buying  back  from  slavery, 
because  it  was  the  daily  usage  of  all  the  peoples  of 
the  earth,  and  they  adopted  the  idea  as  the  prime 


The  Atonement.  77 


element  of  Christ's  atonement.  But  then  the 
question  came,  From  whom  did  Christ  buy  back 
the  lost  race  of  men  ?  Who  was  their  master  and 
what  was  the  slavery  ?  The  slavery,  it  was 
answered,  is  sin,  and  the  enslaving  power  is  Satan ; 
hence  the  great  ransom  was  paid  to  God's  prime 
enemy,  the  Prince  of  Evil.  He  had  snatched  the 
jewel  souls  of  men  from  the  diadem  of  the  Al- 
mighty, and  by  the  laws  of  conquest  they  were 
his,  unless  their  former  owner  and  creator  should 
buy  them  back  by  some  equivalent,  and  that 
equivalent  was  his  Son's  life,  rendered  up  under 
such  circumstances  of  agony  and  woe  as,  while 
Heaven  mourned,  the  arch-fiend  triumphed.  To 
our  ears  such  a  statement  has  the  sound  of  a  shriek, 
a  discord  of  horror  and  absurdity ;  yet  it  was  the 
favorite  theory  for  a  thousand  years, — -not  unbroken 
by  protest  and  denial,  but  with  enough  of  continuity 
to  make  a  chain  of  great  names  in  its  support.  1 
cannot  recite  the  objections  that  led  to  its  over- 
throw, but  they  are  such  as  rise  up  in  our  Christian 
thoughts  much  more  easily  than  in  minds  whose 
thinking  was  done  for  them,  and  which  knew 
nothing  of  the  Bible, — the  generations  of  the  Dark 


yS  Lecture   Third. 


Ages.  It  might  seem  to  have  sprung  from  the 
Manichean  philosophy,  which  held  a  dualism  in 
the  government  of  the  world, —  good  and  bad  powers 
equally  independent  and  always  contending  for 
sovereignty. 

The  empire  of  this  theory,  which  had  run  through 
ages  of  secularism  and  corruption  in  the  church, 
was  broken  by  Anselm,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
in  the  early  part  of  the  twelfth  century. 

In  his  great  book  entitled  "  Why  God  became 
Man,"  he  lifted  the  whole  conception  of  Christ's 
atonement  into  the  blended  light  of  the  essential 
deity  and  the  essential  humanity,  and  showed  that, 
as  man's  first,  last  misery  was  personal  guiltiness, 
so  his  first,  last,  total  want  was  the  blotting  out 
of  that  guiltiness,  the  free  and  absolute  forgiveness 
of  his  sins.  Christ  therefore  made  propitiation  to 
the  Father,  not  to  Satan,  and  the  Father,  who 
would  otherwise  be  held  back  from  forgiveness  by 
the  sanction  of  his  holiness,  justice,  and  truth, 
could  now  pronounce  his  law,  which  embodied  all 
the  three,  satisfied  and  vindicated. 

Mercy  and  Truth  met  together,  Kighteousness 
and  Peace  kissed  each  other  at   the  cross   when 


The  Atonement.  79 


Jesus   died.     God   could   now    be  just   and    still 

justify  the  ungodly.     This  theory  of  Anselm's  was 

argued  with  immense  force  of  logic,  and  with  that 

knowledge  of  human   nature  which  comes  from 

profound  religious  experience,  holding  the  heart 

up  between  itself  and  God,  so  that  in  his  divine 

light  a  man  sees  himself  as   in    a  transparency. 

But  not  even  the  great  power  and  piety  of  Anselm 

could  gain  supremacy  for  his  theory  at  once.     It 

lived  a  checkered  life  up  to  the  sixteenth  century, 

—the  period  of  the  Reformation,— when  it  became 

the  accepted  type  of  religious  thinking  among  the 

most  strenuous  thinkers  of  the  most  strenuous  age 

of  history.     The  emancipation  of  the  human  mind 

which  sprang  of  that  grand  epoch,  the  depth  of 

spiritual  insight  begotten  of  the  free  reading  of 

God's  word,  the  vigor  of  the  whole  manhood  of 

man  which  came  up  into  consciousness  under  the 

stimulating  force  of  freedom,  were  mainly  centred 

on  religious  themes. 

The  influence  of  the  schoolmen  in  sharpening 
the  thinking  powers  had  prepared  the  way  for  the 
handling  of  deep  and  abstract  topics,  and  there 
were  none  others  to  challenge  their  thoughts. 


8o  Lecture   TJiird. 


The  brilliant  era  of  material  science  was  full  two 
centuries  in  the  future.  Bacon  was  not  yet  born 
to  discover  or  recover  the  master-key  of  induction 
which  was  to  unlock  the  penetralia  of  Nature,  so 
that  men  could  enter,  and  explore  her  open  secrets. 
Hence  the  accumulated  thought  of  the  age  threw 
its  whole  weight  into  theology,  canvassing  and 
criticising  its  deep  revelations,  and  none  so  much 
as  the  central  one  of  Christ's  redeeming  work,  its 
methods  and  its  power,  how  it  could  obviate  the 
moral  demerit  of  man  and  procure  the  pardon  of 
his  sins. 

Men  saw  that  this  was  the  pivot  truth  of  revela- 
tion; that  the  whole  gospel  was  gathered  into  it; 
that  if  there  were  no  substitute  to  bear  the  retri- 
bution of  man's  guilt,  there  was  to  human  concep- 
tions no  assignable  reason  why  there  should  be  a 
gospel  at  all,  with  its  tremendous  sacrifice  of  a 
humiliated  God.  The  gospel  would  be  then  only 
a  reduplication  of  the  religion  of  nature,  with  the 
addition  of  the  Divine  Person  to  reinforce  the 
testimony  of  the  Divine  works. 

Martin  Luther,  with  his  intense  soul,  seized 
upon  the  divinity  of  the  atonement  with  such  an 


The  Atonement.  8 1 


absolute  embrace  as  seemed  almost  to  neutralize 
the  responsibility  of  man.  Christ  was  the  be- 
liever's substituted  righteousness,  not  only  by  what 
he  endured,  but  likewise  by  what  he  did;  his 
active  as  well  as  his  passive  obedience  were  in  the 
place  and  in  behalf  of  man's.  His  theory  seemed 
to  involve  the  conclusion  that  since,  because  Christ 
suffered  for  human  sin,  man  need  not  suffer,  so  if 
Christ  obeyed  for  man,  then  man  need  not  obey. 
It  was  charged  with  unhinging  the  code  of  moral 
sanctions,  and  inaugurating  a  saturnalia  of  licen- 
tiousness. But  Luther  repelled  the  vicious  con- 
clusion by  replying  that  although  the  law  of 
obedience  was  blotted  out  by  the  blood  of  Christ, 
yet  the  new  Christ  life  of  the  believer  was  its  own 
inspired  and  instinctive  law.  Obedience  would 
grow  out  of  him  instead  of  being  forced  upon  him. 
The  Lutheran  doctrine  became  essentially  the 
doctrine  of  all  the  reformed  churches,  though 
modified  by  various  theories  touching  the  method 
of  the  atonement,  each  theory  being  met  by 
specific  objections.  The  theories  all  agreed,  how- 
ever, in  maintaining  the  idea  of  substitution  as  the 
characteristic  and  vital  element   of  the   atoning 


82  Lecture   Third. 


work,  so  that  with  the  body  of  believers  there  was 
a  substantial  unity  of  faith. 

We  can  easily  understand  to  what  classes  of 
religious  thinkers  the  fundamental  idea  of  substi- 
tution would  be  absolutely  repulsive.  The  Arian, 
who  denied  the  divinity  of  Christ,  would  of  course 
refuse  assent  to  the  idea  throughout,  since  it  was 
absurd  to  suppose  that  a  created  being  could  offer 
a  meritorious  satisfaction  for  the  sins  of  a  world. 

The  Sabellian,  maintaining  that  Christ  was  only 
the  Father  with  another  name,  must  likewise  deny 
the  substitution,  because  it  is  impossible  to  think 
of  the  same  person  offering  sacrifice  and  propitia- 
tion to  himself. 

The  Arian  views  were  represented  by  Socinus, 
the  lineal  predecessor  of  the  Unitarians;  but  the 
Sabellian  theory  of  the  Trinity  had  not  then,  so 
far  as  I  know,  any  class  representative.  The  revi- 
val of  Sabellianism  was  of  later  date.  Its  reappear- 
ance is,  indeed,  an  event  of  our  century,  and  it 
occurred,  not  so  much  as  a  lapse  from  the  true 
belief  as  a  recoil  from  the  dreary,  dark  denial  of 
Christianity  itself,  which  involved  the  churches  of 
Germany,  through  several  generations.     The  Ger- 


The  Atonement.  83 


mans  had  translated  into  their  own  tongue  the 
writings  of  the  English  deists  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  had  transformed  their  matter-of-fact 
unbelief  into  the  sublimated  speculations  that 
characterize  the  Teutonic  thinking.  Their  scepti- 
cism took  the  form  of  a  philosophy  which  culmi- 
nated in  pantheism,  rejecting  the  Bible  entirely,  or 
else  trying  to  square  its  statements  with  their 
philosophy,  and  torturing  the  sacred  writings  by 
interpretations  of  melancholy  grotesqueness.  From 
such  a  system  of  madly  independent  thought,  a 
doctrine  like  that  of  the  atonement  would  of  neces- 
sity drop  out;  and  while  the  Church  was  dominated 
by  the  Schools,  and  its  ministers  were  of  their 
training,  the  former  faith  became,  with  few  excep- 
tions, a  dead  orthodoxy.  Here  and  there  was 
heard  a  solitary  and  gentle  reclaim  from  some 
whose  religious  consciousness  could  not  quite  be 
obscured  by  the  philosophical  fog,  men  of  fervid 
piety,  but  with  such  an  overruling  influence  of 
their  academic  training  that  it  seems  almost  as  if 
their  philosophy  was  their  gospel  after  all. 

Schleiermacher  represents  most  truly  this  partial 
return  of  faith  from  the  wild  verge  to  which  it  had 


84  Lecture   Third. 


run,  and  with  him  and  his  sanctified  philosophy, 
Christianity  became  respectable  again,  and  Christ  a 
power;  but  even  with  him  it  is  not  Christ,  the 
sacrifice,  the  propitiation,  the  High  Priest,  but 
Christ,  the  loving  and  living  Son  of  God,  coming 
down  to  draw  men  to  himself  by  the  attractions  of 
his  spiritual  loveliness  and  by  the  fulness  with 
which  he  meets  the  soul's  aspiration  after  God. 

Beautiful,  fascinating  as  this  sort  of  faith  is,  it 
fails,  evidently,  to  reach  the  deep  relation  of  Christ 
to  our  moral  nature,  which  our  nature,  awakened 
to  its  utter  need,  feels  even  to  the  centre  of  its 
consciousness.  This  system  is,  however,  so  clear 
an  advance  from  the  dead  sea  of  philosophical  un- 
belief towards  the  promised  land  of  God's  people, 
that  the  Christian  faith  may  thank  God  and  take 
courage,  with  the  hope  of  a  restored,  believing 
Germany. 

The  German  philosophy,  in  its  improved  form, 
was  borrowed  into  England  by  Coleridge,  and  was 
set  forth  by  him  to  a  school  of  thoughtful  disciples, 
numbering  men  of  the  purest  character  and  of  the 
finest  minds  in  the  realm.  His  influence  was  that 
of  an  oracle,  speaking  sometimes  as  from  the  glory 


The  Atonement.  85 


of  an  open  firmament  of  light  and  sometimes  from 
the  darkness  of  a  clouded  sky,  but  always  with  an 
authority  that  seemed  to  come  down  from  above. 
Almost  the  whole  school  of  his  disciples  were  led 
by  him  into  a  style  of  religious  thinking  that  sank 
the  cross  out  of  its  singular  eminence.  The  propi- 
tiatory element  of  the  doctrine  of  the  atonement 
was  volatilized,  and  escaped.  The  idea  of  substi- 
tution was  rejected;  "vicarious"  became  an  ill- 
sounding  word ;  the  ground-work  of  atonement,  as 
laid  in  the  moral  guiltiness  of  man,  was  covered 
up.  "  Guilt "  seemed  a  word  of  another  vocabulary. 
Man's  sinfulness  was  represented  as  very  much  a 
misfortune,  but  as  hardly  more.  God's  love  was 
presented  as  the  attributes  which  engrossed  and 
concealed  the  other  attributes  in  its  own  bosom  of 
light;  his  holiness,  his  justice,  his  truth,  were  not 
considered  as  leading  powers  in  his  administrative 
relations  with  man.  Judgment  and  the  retribu- 
tions of  a  life  after  this  seemed  to  be  practically 
disallowed,  and  God,  as  a  moral  administrator,  the 
Deity  of  an  obsolete  dispensation.  His  character 
was  displayed  as  a  pure  fatherliness.  In  fact,  it 
was  customary  to  say  that  the  single  purpose  of 


&6  Lecture   Third. 


the  mission  of  the  Son  of  God  was  to  proclaim  the 
fatherhood  of  God  as  a  truth  of  glory  hitherto 
unrevealed. 

To  the  common  definition  of  atonement  the  con- 
stant reply  was  that  atonement  means  reconcilia- 
tion, and  that  of  the  two  parties  at  variance  God 
needs  no  reconciliation.  His  fatherly  heart  is  al- 
ready bending  itself  towards  the  wickedest,  and  it 
is  man  alone  who  needs  to  be  influenced  and 
changed.  To  awaken  or  create  the  temper  of  rec- 
onciliation in  the  human  soul  Christ  came  in 
mighty  humiliation,  was  incarnated,  taught,  en- 
dured a  life  of  cruel  self-denial,  which,  by  its 
persuasive  pathos,  might  subdue  the  hard  unwill- 
ingness that  kept  man  from  God.  To  this  life  of 
sorrow  and  wretchedness  his  death  was  only  the 
apt  and  necessary  conclusion.  And  all  this,  his 
life  as  much  as  his  death,  was  his  atonement. 

Next  to  this  it  follows  that,  to  become  a  Chris- 
tian, a  man  must  tread  in  the  footsteps  of  Christ, 
obey  his  precepts,  especially  imitating  the  daily 
self-denial  of  the  Saviour,  and  so  achieving  for  him- 
self a  Christly  character.  In  all  this  the  sacrificial 
character  of  Christ's  death  is  impatiently  set  aside 


The  Atonement.  Sy 


with  the  grouped  thoughts  that  gathered  to  it  from 
before  and  behind, — man's  guilt  and  helpless  doom, 
the  life-giving  power  of  faith  in  a  Divine  substi- 
tute of  doom,  the  Holy  Spirit's  help  covenanted 
by  the  atoning  death,  and  the  final  acceptance  of 
the  soul  with  God, — accepted  in  the  beloved.  I 
have  called  this  the  Sabellian  view  of  the  atone- 
ment, not  because  all  who  hold  it  must  necessarily 
be  Sabellians,  but  because  the  Sabellian  doctrine 
of  the  Trinity  will  harmonize  with  no  other  doctrine 
of  the  atonement  except  this.  It  is  a  doctrine  that 
has  grown  and  is  growing  with  the  Century,  in 
England  and  in  America,  in  the  English  Church 
and  in  our  own.  It  numbers  among  its  teachers 
and  preachers  bright  and  pure  men,  whose  elevated 
lives  seem  to  vouch,  as  far  as  a  life  can  vouch,  for 
the  truth  of  their  doctrine.  As  it  was  in  the  case 
of  Arius  and  Apollinarius,  and  with  our  early  Uni- 
tarians, so  was  it  with  the  Brothers  Hare,  and  with 
Maurice  and  Robertson  and  Stanley  and  Dr.  John 
Young  in  England,  and  with  Bushnell  in  America. 
Before  we  investigate  the  causes  that  have  given 
birth  and  vigorous  currency  to  this  theory,  let  us 
test  some  of  its   positions  by  the   Scriptures.     I 


88  Lecture   Third. 


think  that  its  foremost  assertion  that  Christ  came 
to  proclaim  the  fatherhood  of  God,  hitherto  an  un- 
acknowledged truth,  is  an  assertion  that  lacks  the 
warranty  of  the  Word  of  God.  I  am  not  sure  that 
the  Old  Testament  has  fewer  declarations  of  God's 
paternal  character  than  the  New,  and  if  it  has,  I 
am  sure  that  those  declarations  are  so  emphatic, 
and  their  illustrations  so  subduingly  tender,  that 
none  can  be  more  so.  The  Concordance  will  show 
how  often  the  gracious  title  is  employed.  The 
Psalms  reveal  the  fatherhood  in  such  winning 
guise  that  Jesus  seems  to  have  adopted  it  as  the 
illustration  of  his  own  loving  nurture  of  his  flock. 
The  whole  twenty-third  Psalm  is  full  of  the  father- 
hood. That  it  was  not  a  fatherhood  of  the  Jews 
alone,  but  of  all  mankind,  was  recognized  by  the 
prophet, — "Doubtless  thou  art  our  father,  though 
Abraham  be  ignorant  of  us." 

The  first  postulate  of  the  theory,  therefore,  seems 
to  be  too  hastily  assumed.  Take  next  the  state- 
ment that  Christ's  whole  life  was  one  of  painful 
self-denial,  which  was  a  chief  element  of  the  per- 
suasive reconciling  power  that  lay  in  his  life's 
suffering  as  much  as  in  the  pains  of  his  death. 


The  Atonement.  89 


This  statement,  again,  seems  hardly  to  be  borne  out 
by  the  narrative  of  the  four  Gospels ;  for  up  to  his 
thirtieth  year,  Jesus  lived  the  common  life  of  his 
family  and  friends,  with  no  more  than  the  usual 
trials  of  an  humble  condition  of  life,  the  economy 
of  a  community  not  rich.  In  that  year  he  com- 
menced his  ministry  with  his  baptism.  Then  the 
Fathers  word  came  down  from  the  open  heaven  to 
warrant  his  commission  of  Messiahship, — "  This  is 
my  beloved  Son  in  whom  I  am  well  pleased."  Then 
the  Holy  Ghost  descended  upon  him  to  endow  him 
with  the  full  spirit  and  power  of  Messiahship,  and 
filling  him  then,  for  the  first  time,  with  its  ripe  con- 
sciousness, leads  him  into  the  wilderness  to  hold 
for  forty  days  transcendent  and  delighted  com- 
munion with  his  Father, — communion  so  transcend- 
ent that  its  rapture  absorbed  all  consciousness  of 
physical  want.  Afterwards  he  was  an  hungered, 
and  Satan  came  upon  his  exhausted  frame  and 
tortured  it  with  temptations;  but  even  in  his  ex- 
haustion his  new-born  consciousness  of  power 
defeated  the  Tempter  with  a  word.  Here  is  the 
first  thing  that  can  be  called  a  pain  in  Christ's  life, 
if  that  may  be  called  a  pain  which  was  the  occa- 


go  Lecture  Third. 


sion  of  such  easy,  divine  victory:  it  was  no  self- 
denial,  but  the  calm  superiority  of  the  spirit  over 
matter,  of  heaven  over  earth.  We  cannot  conceive 
of  his  being  for  an  instant  in  doubt,  or  of  his  con- 
science wavering  for  a  moment  from  its  heaven- 
ward poise.  True,  he  learned  what  the  power  of 
Satan  must  be  over  us,  his  frail  brotherhood,  and 
he  taught  us  too  that  thereby  he  was  fitted  to  be 
a  sympathizing  intercessor  with  the  Father,  and 
that  we  should  conquer  even  as  he  conquered. 

For  three  years  after  this  he  lived  the  life  of  a 
pilgrim,  with  no  home  of  his  own,  but  not  without 
friends  whose  home  was  his,  and  never  in  all  the 
time  complaining  of  any  material  hardship  or  trial. 
But  as  the  time  of  his  death  approached,  there 
came  the  agony  of  heart  and  soul  in  Gethsemane 
that  made  him  the  very  prophetic  "  Man  of  sor- 
rows, acquainted  with  grief."  Yet  this  sorrow 
was  associated,  not  with  his  life,  but  with  the 
atoning  death  he  was  to  die, — a  shadow  of  its 
gloom  in  advance.  There  would  seem  to  have 
been  no  other  real  sorrow  of  Christ,  none  that  a 
genuine,  generous  manhood  would  not  refuse  to 
call  such,   except  those  divine  human   griefs,  in- 


The  Atonement. 


91 


accessible  to  human  conception,  which  made  at 
once  the   indescribable  woe  and  the  unutterable 
glory  of  the  cross.     To  affirm  self-denial  in  the  life 
of  Christ  as  a  pain  and  a  torment  seems  to  be  as 
unworthy  of  him  as  it  is  untrue  to  Scripture.     To 
say  that  his  life,  equally  with  his  death,  made  part 
of  his  suffering  for  man,  is  to  ignore  the  open  pas- 
sages where  his  redemption  is  centred  in  the  one 
point   of  his  dying.     "Redemption   through  His 
blood,  even  the  forgiveness  of  sins,"  is  the  brief 
formula  which  conveys,    in  whatever  variations, 
the  truth  that  the  atonement  was  concentred  at 
the  cross.     It  sounds  out  in  the  various  language 
of  the  Bible,  and  it  sounds  down  from  the  song  of 
the  redeemed.     And  more  yet,  when  Christ  him- 
self would  show  us  how  he  would  have  us  hold  the 
faith,  he  embodied  it  in  a  memorial  sacrament  ex- 
hibiting the  concrete  of  the  gospel,  the  unchang- 
ing type  of  Christian  belief, — his   body  and  his 
blood,  his  death,  not  his  life. 

Again,  the  theory  that  we  are  canvassing  declares 
that  Christ  came  to  illustrate  the  divine  love,  and 
so  to  persuade  men  to  repentance.  Dr.  Bushnell 
explains  it  thus:  A  person  who  has  inflicted  an 


g2  Lecture  Third. 


injury  upon  another  is  apt  to  imagine  him  to  be 
in  a  state  of  chronic  resentment;  hence  he  is  sus- 
picious of  him  and  avoids  him.  If  overtures  of 
reconciliation  are  made,  he  suspects  their  sincerity ; 
if  he  is  assured  that  the  feelings  of  the  injured 
person  are  still  kindly  and  complacent,  he  cannot 
be  made  to  believe  it.  And  so,  fearing  a  latent 
resentment  burrowing  in  the  heart  of  his  enemy, 
he  dares  not  put  himself  within  its  reach  and  keeps 
off  in  estrangement  and  hostility. 

So  is  it,  says  Dr.  Bushnell,  with  man  and  God. 
Man,  being  the  offender,  supposes  God  to  be  his 
enemy ;  hence  he  avoids  him,  is  afraid  of  him.  If 
he  believed  that  God  truly  loved  him,  it  would 
melt  down  the  iron  of  his  impenitence  and  bring 
him  into  a  state  of  reconciliation.  To  convince 
him  of  his  love,  God  blesses  him  with  the  good 
things  of  his  Providence;  and  as  man  still  doubts, 
God  sends  him  special  messages  in  his  Word,  as- 
suring him  of  his  abiding  paternal  tenderness;  and 
when,  after  all,  man  still  holds  in  his  bosom,  like 
a  demon,  the  infesting  doubt,  God  comes  down 
himself,  and  dies  on  the  cross,  to  show  the  supreme 
strength  of  his  love,  proving  by  symbol  what  he 


The  Atonement.  93 


had  already  declared  by  word.  The  death  of 
Christ,  therefore,  removes  no  impediment  in  the 
way  of  man's  forgiveness.  It  makes  no  retributive 
exaction  upon  his  wilful  guilt;  it  tells  him  to  come 
back  to  the  Father  he  has  left,  and  all  will  be  well; 
it  adds  no  new  truth,  but  reaffirms  in  a  new  way 
an  old  one.  The  mighty  tragedy  of  the  cross  is  an 
exhibition,  arranged  on  purpose  as  an  exhibition. 

There  is  a  histrionic  air  in  the  transaction  as 
thus  explained  that  carries  to  the  mind  an  im- 
pression of  unreality,  and  robs  the  dreadful  death 
of  all  the  persuasive  power  that  is  ascribed  to  it. 
It  seems  painstaking  and  artificial,  an  ingenious 
expedient  to  produce  an  emotional  effect;  and 
when  it  has  done  this,  the  whole  force  and  mean- 
ing of  the  cross  is  exhausted.  That  supreme  crisis 
in  the  history  of  God's  dealings  with  our  apostate 
mankind,  which  had  been  the  theme  of  agonized 
and  of  joyous  prophecy  through  the  ages,  which 
was  to  solve  the  heavenly  problem  that  angels 
desired  to  look  into, — "  how  God  could  be  just  and 
yet  justify  the  ungodly," — the  grand  event  which 
began  with  the  humiliation  of  God  and  went  od 
controlling  the  course  of  affairs,  public  and  private, 


94  Lecture   Tliird. 


and  leading  the  whole  order  of  Divine  Providence 
in  its  train,  so  that  it  became  the  focal  point  to 
which  the  natural  and  moral  attributes  of  God  had 
long  tended,  and  were  now  centred  as  to  a  finality, 
a  consummation,  beyond  which  there  could  be 
nothing  more, — this  crowning  crisis  was  after  all 
to  be  only  a  display,  showing  nothing  that  man 
did  not  know  before,  but  only  asserting  it  in  such 
a  way  and  with  such  an  avowed  purpose  of  dis- 
play as  to  impair  its  moral  influence,  and  to  put 
the  mind  into  a  critical  mood  that  would  of  itself 
drive  the  sensibilities  back  into  inaccessibility. 
The  great  experiment  on  human  feeling  would 
thus  inevitably  precipitate  its  own  failure.  It  is 
most  different,  I  think,  to  all  this  when  the  death 
of  the  Son  of  God  is  the  propitiation  for  the  guilt 
of  the  world,  a  penal  death  that  bore  on  its  broad 
substitution  the  sins  of  mankind,  meeting  the 
demands  of  eternal  truth  and  righteousness,  and 
abolishing  human  guilt  forever.  That  death  is  no 
mere  display,  not  a  simple  method  of  persuasion. 
It  does  something;  it  reverses  the  moral  condition 
of  man,  changes  it  from  dark  doom  to  hope  and 
cheer. 


The  Atonement.  95 


It  is  indeed  an  exhibition  of  Divine  love,  but  not 
of  love  proposing  and  preparing  itself  for  exhibi- 
tion alone.     The  love  is  seen  in  its  purpose  and  its 
results, — Christ  dying  to  save  us  from  dying,  dying 
once  for  all,  that  we  need  not  die  eternally.     "  Here- 
in is  love,  that  God  gave  his  Son  to  be  the  propiti- 
ation for  our  sins."     When  the  Divine  love  comes 
out  into  this  light  it  comes  with  a  persuasive  force 
as  strong  as  the  felt  value  of  the  soul.     It  is  not 
what  the  cross  seems,  but  what  it  does,  that  makes 
it  a  power.     If  the  soul  can  ever  be  subdued  and 
reclaimed  to  God  by  the  death  of  Christ,  it  is  when 
it  sees  in  that  death  the  redeeming  purchase  of  its 
own  forfeited  life,  the  blood-bo ught  pardon  of  its 
guilt.     Then  it  is  a  power  of  regeneration  that 
grasps  the  soul  around,  and  holds  it  in  the  de- 
lighted embrace  of  God  and  his  salvation.     Upon 
this  point,  namely,  the  comparative  efficacy  of  the 
two  theories  of  the  atonement  in  meeting  the  wants 
of  the  soul  in  its  most  awakened  life,  we  may  refer 
even  to  Dr.  Bushnell  himself,  a  witness  of  author- 
ity,  who,  in  his  work  on  Vicarious  Atonement, 
makes  a  concession  against  his  own  principles  as 
remarkable,  perhaps,  as  anything  in  all  literature. 


g6  Lecture   Third. 


After  elaborating  the  Sabellian  theory  of  the  atone- 
ment throughout  nearly  his  whole  volume,  with 
his  accustomed  vigor  of  argument  and  rhetoric,  he 
passes  in  one  of  the  closing  chapters  to  consider 
its  value  and  power  as  an  experimental  truth,  and 
compares  it  with  the  accepted  doctrine  of  the  atone- 
ment, which  he  calls  the  "  Altar  Theory."  In  this 
comparison  he  frankly  admits  that  to  a  person  op- 
pressed with  the  convictions  of  conscience  and  the 
sense  of  guiltiness,  his  theory  ministers  no  solace. 
It  does  not  satisfy  the  instinctive  perception  of 
righteousness,  which  is  always  strongest  and  clear- 
est in  a  soul  convicted  of  its  own  unrighteousness, 
and  which  always  joins  together  sin  and  retribu- 
tion as  necessary  correlatives.  The  "  Altar  View  " 
alone  will  meet  and  satisfy  the  cravings  of  that 
awakened  and  conscience-stricken  person.  Christ 
must  be  presented  to  him  as  a  sacrifice,  oblation, 
and  satisfaction  for  his  sins,  and  then,  re- 
nouncing all  other  trust,  he  rests  upon  the  merit 
of  a  dying  Saviour,  and  finds  the  surpassing  peace 
of  pardon  through  his  blood.  On  reading  this 
strange  admission,  one  can  hardly  help  asking,  "  If 
the  author  knew  the  worthlessness  of  his  theory 


The  Atonement.  97 


before  he  wrote  his  book,  why  did  he  write  it  ? 

If  he  did  not  know  it  till  the  book  was  written, 

why  did  he  publish  it  ?  " 

This  theory  chimes  in,  no  doubt,  with  the  hu- 

manitarianism  of  the  age,  which  thinks  more  of 
compassion  than  of  justice  and  righteousness.  The 
engrossment  of  our  philanthropy  confines  our  con- 
templations so  much  to  the  earth  and  its  wants, 
that  we  fail  to  look  up  to  the  heavens,  and  to  Him 
who  dwelleth  therein.  Man's  wants  and  poverty 
lead  us  to  overlook  man's  crimes,  till  we  come  to 
feel  that  God  will  overlook  them  too;  and  when 
once  the  sense  and  appreciation  of  guilt  goes  out, 
all  the  grand,  grave  truths  of  the  Bible  that  postu- 
late that  guilt  must  fail  of  access  to  the  conscious- 
ness of  men. 

The  prosperity  and  self-indulgence  of  the  times, 
the  triumph  of  scientific  thought,  the  skill  of  our 
arts,  the  pride  of  our  freedom,  all  conspire  to  make 
man  the  all  in  all,  and  God  the  ready  servitor. 
The  Bible  grows  into  disuse,  and  then  into  disre- 
spect; its  theology  is  discarded  as  narrow,  its  sol- 
emn sanctions  as  null.  It  is  as  if,  in  our  self- 
sufficiency,  the  general  mind  had  been  drugged  with 


98  Lecture  Third. 


henbane,  and  through  its  dilated  pupil  saw  every- 
thing only  broad  and  dim. 

Turning  from  the  criticism  of  theories,  let  us 
consider  a  question  often  asked,  "  What  is  the  test 
quality  by  which,  among  all  the  theories  of  the 
atonement,  we  may  know  the  true  one, — the  one 
maintained  in  the  Christian  consciousness  of  the 
ages  ?  "  I  suppose  the  true  answer  to  be  that  what- 
ever theory  recognizes  the  death  of  Christ  as  a 
reason  or  an  influence,  on  account  of  which  God 
grants  us  the  grace  of  his  forgiveness,  such  is  es- 
sentially a  true  doctrine  of  the  atonement.  If,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  theory  represents  the  death  of 
Christ  as  having  no  effect  God  ward,  but  only  as  a 
moral  power,  a  divine  persuasive  to  man's  soul, 
then,  though  Christ  be  exhibited  in  the  fascination 
of  his  living  person,  the  beauty  of  his  benevolence, 
and  the  whole  varied  loveliness  of  his  life,  or  be 
presented  as  a  martyr  dying  for  the  truth,  and  the 
dying  be  tinged  with  such  pathos  that  we  pity  and 
weep,  and  are  aroused  and  are  indignant,  all  at 
once,  yet  if  there  be  no  more  than  this,  the  theory 
fails  of  that  Scriptural  accord  without  which  it  is 
a  fallacy.     At  this  point  the  road  forks,  and  while 


The  Atonement.  99 


the  one  theory  holds  the  soul  to  Christ,  and  leads 
the  church  to  God,  higher  and  nearer  as  the  road 
leads  forward,  the  other  theory  has  none  but  a  de- 
scending advance,  the  farther  the  lower,  until  it 
may  reach  the  common  terrestrial  level  where 
Christ  is  no  better  than  Socrates,  or  the  Gospel 
than  the  Memorabilia.  Although  I  have  dis- 
cussed our  theme  at  such  length,  I  am  loath  to  let 
it  go. 

Among  the  diverse  theories  which  hold  the  es- 
sential idea  of  atonement,  is  there  any  one  which 
commends  itself  specially  as  denoting  the  true 
method  ?  To  my  mind,  there  is  one  grandly  pe- 
culiar and  satisfying  to  the  human  consciousness 
of  guilt.  I  can  do  hardly  more  than  suggest  it. 
It  is  grounded  on  the  strange,  heart-stirring  cry  of 
Christ  upon  the  cross,  "  My  God,  my  God  !  Why 
hast  thou  forsaken  me  ?  "  These  words  admit  of 
no  rhetorical  gloss.  It  were  monstrous  to  torture 
them  by  a  various  reading.  They  are  a  live  pic- 
ture of  Christ's  consciousness.  He  was  forsaken 
of  his  Father.  We  may  not  analyze  his  condition 
of  mind,  but  it  must  have  been  pure  woe.  The 
filial  consciousness  of  the  Divine  Son  towards  the 


:oo  Lecture  Third. 


Divine  Father  was  broken.  He  was  as  an  alien. 
If  this  be  so,  then  we  can  understand  the  only  real 
woe  that  ever  came  near  to  the  soul  and  life  of 
Christ.  It  was  the  very  woe  he  came  to  bear;  it 
was  the  culminating  point  of  his  redeeming  work. 
For  this  cause  came  he  to  this  hour.  It  was  the 
cup  his  Father  had  given  him,  and  he  drank  it. 
And  whence  and  why  this  woe  ?  the  soul  reverently 
asks.  Was  this  a  penal  woe  ?  It  was  either  this 
or  else  gratuitous  cruelty.  It  was  penal,  then ;  but 
penal  on  whose  account  ?  He  did  no  sin.  Look 
at  it  a  moment,  and  remember  that  God's  deser- 
tion is  the  specific  doom  of  sin.  "Depart  from 
me"  is  the  formulated  woe  of  eternity;  and  that 
woe,  the  precise  penalty  of  human  guilt,  was  pre- 
cisely forestalled  upon  the  cross.  He  bore  our  sins 
and  carried  our  sorrows;  he  was  our  very  substi- 
tute in  penal  suffering.  "Thou  shalt  make  his 
soul  an  offering  for  sin.'  Can  we  go  any  further  ? 
Perhaps  so.     The  Son  of  God — the  eternal  Logos 

was  the  Creator  and  the  light  and  life  of  men. 

His  being  was  incorporated  with  human  life  be- 
fore he  was  born  of  Mary.  His  incarnation  was 
the  symbol  of  a  foregone  and  still  subsisting  fact 


The  Atonement.  101 


that  the  Son  of  God  and  humanity  were  life  of  life. 
Everything  that  Christ  did,  he  did  for  man  in 
man's  place  as  man,  man's  representative.  In  the 
agony  of  the  garden  humanity  suffered  with  him ; 
on  the  cross  humanity  cried  out;  in  that  penal 
woe,  to  which  Christ  gave  his  consenting  soul,  hu- 
manity was  bearing  its  penalty.  He  acted  and 
suffered  for  us,  and  we  by  him.  It  was  by  no  fic- 
tion of  law,  by  no  technical  relation,  that  he  was 
our  surety  and  our  substitute:  he  was  our  very 
selves.  In  him  humanity  bowed  itself  to  the  in- 
fliction, owned  its  perfect  righteousness,  and  was 
restored  to  a  divine  sonship.  A  soul  may  still  re- 
luct, resist,  rebel;  but  when  it  turns  to  God  at 
last,  it  claims  affiance  with  the  dying  Elder  Brother 
of  the  race,  echoes  his  cry  of  agony  as  if  it  were 
its  own  cry,  consents  as  he  consented,  and  feels 
and  knows  that  the  great  satisfaction  has  been 
made  in  its  divine  fulness,  and  that  henceforth 
there  is  no  condemnation. 

This  may  be  the  true  method  of  atonement,  yet 
whether  true  or  not,  we  know  it  is  not  the  method, 
but  the  glorious  fact  itself,  on  which  our  faith 
must  rest ;  and  resting  there,  we  are  prepared  to 


102  Lecture   Third. 


glorify  our  Redeemer  by  an  ever-adoring  service 
of  gratitude  here  on  earth,  and  to  join  in  the  song 
of  the  saved  above,  "  Worthy  the  Lamb  "  who  has 
redeemed  us  to  God  by  his  blood  ! 


LECTURE  IV. 

THE     HOLY     GHOST 


LECTURE  IV. 

THE    HOLY    GHOST. 

FOR  this  fourth  lecture  I  take  for  my  subject 
"  The  Holy  Ghost,  the  Lord  and  Giver  of 
life."     So  the  subject  is  designated  in  the  creed. 

The  triple  personality  of  the  Godhead  is  not  a 
truth  without  its  fruits.  We  are  taught  that  in 
the  economy  of  the  Divine  administration  each 
personality  has  its  distinct  function  and  agency, — 
the  Father  as  the  prime  administrator,  with  whom 
is  authority,  counsel,  and  direction;  the  Son,  the 
eternal  Logos,  as  the  expressive  power  the  man- 
ifester  of  God,  whether  by  word  or  life,  whether 
before  or  after  his  incarnation ;  and  the  Holy  Ghost 
as  the  practical  energy  of  Deity,  to  make  effectual 
the  Divine  counsels  by  living  results  through  all 
the  realms  of  creation  and  with  all  classes  of  cre- 

(105^ 


lo6  Lecture  Fourth. 


ated  things.  When  we  speak  of  the  works  of  God, 
therefore,  we  define  the  specific  agency  and  power 
of  the  Holy  Ghost.  Whatever  of  omnipotence,  of 
omniscience,  or  of  omnipresence  is  involved  in 
producing  and  maintaining  the  universe,  is  the 
working  power  of  Deity  through  the  third  person 
of  the  Godhead. 

Thus  the  whole  amplitude  of  the  world  is  opened 
out  before  us.  Its  manifold  forms  of  subsistence 
come  into  review  one  by  one;  for  he  is  the  giver 
of  life  to  them  all,  and  their  presiding  Lord  as 
well. 

We  begin,  therefore,  with  the  physical  creation, 
of  which  the  Scriptural  account  runs  thus:  "  In  the 
beginning  God  created  the  heaven  and  the  earth, 
and  the  earth  was  without  form  and  void,  and 
darkness  was  upon  the  face  of  the  deep.  And  the 
Spirit  of  God  moved  upon  the  face  of  the  waters. 
And  God  said,  Let  there  be  light,  and  there  was 
light." 

Of  course  a  description  like  this  will  have  to  en- 
counter what  are  called  the  discoveries  of  modern 
science  which  claim  to  have  exploded  this  whole 
history  of  the  creation  as  partly  a  fallacy  and  the 


The  Holy  Ghost.  107 


rest  an  absurdity.  The  alleged  absurdity  lies  in 
supposing,  as  this  account  seems  to  suppose,  that 
God  created  something  out  of  nothing,  whereas 
it  is  an  axiom  of  science  that  nothing  can  ever 
be  produced  from  nothing.  Now  this  axiom  is 
brought  down  to  us  from  the  ancient  philosophies, 
in  which  a  personal  Creator  had  no  recognized 
place.  It  is  a  maxim  which  gauges  the  possibilities 
of  things  by  a  simply  human  standard.  No  skill 
of  man  could  ever  produce  something  out  of 
nothing,  and  no  wit  of  man,  which  can  affirm  only 
from  experience,  can  understand  how  it  can  be 
done;  and  so  it  is  peremptorily  affirmed  to  be 
impossible. 

The  weakness  of  the  objection  lies  in  its  leaving 
out  the  presence  and  power  of  a  Creator,  who  is 
infinitely  greater  than  man,  and  who,  for  aught 
that  we  know,  can  perform  an  act  of  pure  and  sim- 
ple creation,  bringing  entity  out  of  non-entity. 

There  is  no  self-contradiction  in  the  statement. 

The  difficulty  lies  in  our  not  being  able  to  con- 
ceive how  it  can  be  done,  and  this  difficulty  besets 
all  our  thinking  when  we  think  about  the  works 
of  God.     This  objection,  grounded  in  our  ignorance, 


io8  Lectttre  Fourth. 

ought  not  to  claim  the  dignity  of  an  argument, 
still  less  assume  the  authority  of  a  universal  denial 
of  possibility.  Though  founded  on  an  accredited 
axiom  of  science,  it  is  plainly  unphilosophical  and 
beyond  the  modesty  of  reason. 

Moreover,  to  den}7  the  possible  creation  of  some- 
thing out  of  nothing  is  to  assert  the  eternity  of 
material  substance,  distinct  from  the  nature  and 
substance  of  God, — a  theory  which  involves  several 
rational  difficulties. 

For  if  matter  be  eternal,  then  its  existence  must 
be  a  necessary  existence,  which  is  self-existence 
that  cannot  be  impaired  or  modified  by  any  other 
power.  It  must  be  endued  with  all  the  essential 
attributes  of  infinitude, — a  deity  in  and  of  itself, 
a  rival  of  God,  ever  at  war  with  him,  unless  one 
or  the  other  God  parts  with  some  of  his  attributes, 
which,  since  each  exists,  not  of  his  own  will,  but 
by  necessity,  neither  can  do. 

It  is  the  old  Manichean  notion,  long  since  ad- 
judged a  fallacy  by  the  consenting  reason  of 
mankind. 

Assuming,  then,  the  creation  of  crude  amorphous 
matter,  without  form  and  void  of  organic  life,  we 


The  Holy  Ghost.  109 


are  told  that  "  the  Spirit  of  God  moved  upon  the 
face  of  the  waters." 

The  expression  beautifully  denotes  a  hovering, 
brooding  action,  as  if  shedding  down  upon  the 
fluid  mass  a  generative  power,  when  all  at  once 
went  forth  the  life-giving  fiat,  "  Let  there  be  light," 
and  the  world  became  charged  with  the  diffusive 
energy,   "  light  was." 

It  may  be  interesting  to  inquire  how  far  the 
verified  statements  of  science  can  be  made  to 
square  with  this  history  of  creation.  Accepting 
as  the  last  discovery  of  Scientific  research  the  ex- 
istence of  a  substance,  protoplasm  or  bioplasm, 
which  forms  the  basis  of  all  organic  life  (although 
all  scientific  men  do  not  admit  its  universality), 
accepting,  likewise,  its  wonderful  microscopic  de- 
velopments, its  corpuscles,  monads,  cells,  and 
atoms,  we  are  all  aglow  with  the  enthusiasm  of 
discovery.  We  seem  to  be  penetrating  the  grand 
secret  of  universal  existence.  Yet  presently  we 
are  arrested  by  an  impracticability.  We  have  not 
found  the  source  of  life;  we  have  only  reached  the 
microscopic  limit  of  form.  Every  one  of  these 
atoms  of  matter  is  itself  an  organized  substance, 


HO  Lecture  Fourth. 

moulded  and  combined  of  simpler  elements  by 
virtue  of  that  life-power  which  is  alone  the  pro- 
ducer of  organism. 

Whence  is  that  life-power,  the  grand,  universal 
motor  from  which  all  organic  life  is  begotten? 
"  Grant  me,"  says  a  chief  Priest  of  Science, — 
"  grant  me  only  a  particle  of  protoplasm  and  the 
merest  scintilla  of  force,  and  with  time  enough  I 
can  evolve  the  universe."  Most  true;  but  we 
cannot  grant  it  unless  science  can  discover  it.  It 
would  not  be  scientific  to  do  so.  And  if  it  be  not 
granted,  then  how  stands  the  problem? 

Force,  the  power  of  motion,  is  a  thing  entirely 
foreign  to  matter.  Matter  is  inert  and  eternally 
at  rest,  unless  moved  from  without,  and,  we  add, 
from  above,  from  the  great  personal  will  that,  in 
the  person  of  the  Divine  Spirit,  broods  upon  the 
vapory  chaos  which  Science  itself  teaches  to  have 
been  the  first  loose  form  of  things,  and,  with  one 
stroke  of  force,  sets  the  elements  to  work  produc- 
ing atoms,  cells,  monads,  and  diffused  bioplasm, 
until  the  chaos  becomes  a  kosmos.  How  congru- 
ous, then,  with  scientific  suggestion  is  the  Scripture 
history  of  creation,— "  Let   there   be   light,"    and 


The  Holy  Ghost.  in 

light  was.  As  was  explained  in  my  first  lecture, 
science  has  demonstrated  the  beautiful  truth  of 
the  correlation  of  forces,  showing  that  light  and 
heat  and  electricity  and  magnetism,  and  the  rest 
are  congeners  and  may  work  a  common  office,  and 
that  any  one  of  them,  by  whatever  name  it  be 
called,  may  replace  the  rest,  and  produce  the 
organic  results  of  creation. 

The  parent  force  of  this  family  of  forces  is, 
according  to  the  present  tendency  of  scientific 
opinion,  simple  motion,  which,  like  a  living  centre, 
radiates  and  evolves  itself  into  the  various  forms 
of  material  energy.  Accepting  this  conclusion,  we 
see  the  Divine  volition  impinging,  at  a  stroke,  on 
the  chaotic  mass,  and  producing  what  our  common 
experience  proves  to  be  the  first  result  of  volition, 
viz.,  motion,  the  action  and  interaction  of  the 
material  elements  upon  each  other,  establishing 
the  immediate  play  of  affinities,  working  instant 
combinations  of  form,  and,  throughout  the  mighty 
stir,  attesting  itself  in  a  flash  of  universal  light. 
14  Let  there  be  light"  is  the  word-form  of  the  Al- 
mighty volition ;  "  there  was  light1'  denotes  its 
outcome  into  visible  effect. 


112  Lecture  Fourth. 


As  the  eye  answers  at  a  glance  to  the  summons 
received  by  the  ear,  so  the  flashing  world  responded 
on  the  instant  to  the  spoken  will  of  God.  To 
human  conception  the  volition,  the  resulting  mo- 
tion, and  the  attesting  light  would  be  simultaneous, 
without  gap  or  pause  for  a  single  interposing 
thought.  Therefore,  the  suddenness  implied  in 
the  Scripture  account  of  creation  is  no  objection  to 
its  truth. 

The  entrance  of  force  must  always  be  instanta- 
neous. No  matter  how  slow  and  complicated  the 
antecedent  conditions  of  life,  there  is  a  moment 
when  life  is  not;  and  there  is  another  and  next 
moment  when  it  is.  The  quickening  act  is  a  dart, 
a  thrill,  a  stroke  of  force,  whose  effect  is  not  a  pro- 
duction from  itself,  but  the  presence  of  itself.  The 
power  begotten  is  the  simple  transfer  of  the  power 
begetting.  Hence  the  scientific  truth,  as  well  as 
the  rhetorical  sublimity,  of  the  creative  fiat, — 
11  Let  there  be  light,  and  there  was  light." 

"  I  believe  in  the  Holy  Ghost  the  Lord"  as  well 
as  "the  Giver  of  life."  That  is,  the  material  crea- 
tion is  still  under  the  daily  regulating  power  of 
the  Creator. 


The  Holy  Ghost.  113 

The  minds  of  men  have  been  long  divided  on  the 
question  whether  the  Divine  superintendence  of 
the  world  is  indeed  a  present  fact.  Did  God,  when 
he  set  the  universe  in  motion,  establish  for  it  a 
self- regulating  system  of  laws,  and  leave  it  to  run 
on,  like  a  clock,  to  its  assigned  terminus  of  dura- 
tion, and  then  withdraw  himself  into  the  seclusion 
of  his  self-existence;  or  is  he  present  in  every 
movement?  Is  every  movement  of  things,  no 
matter  how  minute,  the  impulse  of  a  distinct 
volition  of  Omnipotence,  so  that  the  changing  play 
of  atoms,  the  delicate  interlacing  of  affinities,  and 
every  miscroscopic  vibration  shall  be  the  products 
of  so  many  mental  purposes  of  the  universal 
wisdom  ?  The  former  theory — that  God  has  retired 
from  the  immediate  direction  of  the  universe  into 
a  calm  self-subsistence — has  the  look  of  Buddha 
about  it;  it  suggests  a  changeless  fate;  it  bars  out 
the  fatherhood  ;  it  forbids  a  miracle  or  a  Providence ; 
it  chills  the  spontaneous  gratitude  that  comes  from 
feeling  God  in  nature  and  life ;  it  makes  our  moral 
pilgrimage  a  cheerless,  dreary,  dreadful  way. 

It  is  the  preferred  theory  of  Science,  however; 
and  making  the  world  everything  and  God  nothing, 


H4  Lecture  Fourth. 

establishing  law  as  having  no  interfering  lawgiver, 
Science  can  the  more  courageously  speculate  to 
conclusions  in  which  the  idea  of  a  personal  God  is 
as  a  cipher.  If  Science  would  admit  the  concep- 
tion of  him  as  the  present  Lord  as  well  as  the  first 
Giver  of  life,  how  would  the  glitter  of  her  several 
discoveries  gather  a  mellow  beauty,  as  they  flashed 
forth  from  amidst  the  great  cloud  of  glory  that 
embodies  the  infinite  Godhead  ! 

But  touching  the  second  theory  that  God  works 
by  his  immediate  presence,  even  in  the  minutest 
phenomena  of  nature,  it  is  objected  that  it  seems 
impossible  to  be  conceived,  and  that  it  belittles  the 
conception  of  him  to  our  minds,  to  think  of  him  as 
among  the  atoms  of  things. 

It  is  impossible  to  be  conceived,  because  omni- 
presence is  inconceivable,  while  yet  it  is  very  true. 
But,  granting  omnipresence,  God's  instant  power 
may  be  very  naturally  a  fact:  and  if  we  try  to 
suppose  the  opposite,  I  think  we  find  it  very  difficult 
to  conceive  how  his  power  can  be  where  his 
presence  is  not.  Then,  as  to  the  belittling  im- 
pression it  conveys  of  God,  we  should  remember 
that  to  the  Infinite  One  there  is  no  great  and   no 


The  Holy  Ghost.  115 


small;  great  things  are  contained  in  small;  the 
vast  telescopic  universe  is  composed  of  the  micros- 
copic atoms.  It  seems  more  worthy  of  God  that  he 
should  be  the  Lord  of  life;  and  Science  will  become 
a  benefactor  to  the  soul  of  man  when  she  shall 
admit  God's  presence  with  his  power,  so  that  not 
a  sparrow  falls  to  the  ground  without  our  Father, 
and  that  he  numbers  the  very  hairs  of  our  heads. 
Such  is  the  agency  and  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
among  material  things, — giver  and  director  of  the 
life  of  the  physical  world. 

But  he  has  a  higher  realm  than  this.  All  an- 
imated things  come  forth  from  him,  and  chiefly 
does  he  hold  communion  with,  and  interpenetrate 
with  his  own  life  the  life  of  man, — man's  intellect, 
his  conscience,  his  affections,  and  his  will.  Some 
of  these  communications  of  the  Spirit  bear  the 
character  of  miracle,  specially  when  he  imparts  to 
the  human  mind  the  power  of  prophesying.  The 
creed  distinguishes  this  agency  thus,  "  the  Holy 
Ghost  who  spake  by  the  prophets." 

There  is  no  exercise  of  the  reason  of  man  in 
which  it  so  soon  finds  the  limits  of  its  power  as 
when  it  undertakes  to  forecast  the  future  of  things. 


Il6  Lecture  Fourth. 


In  the  loose  connections  of  daily  life  and  in  Politics 
and  Political  Economy  and  Finance,  where  the  cal- 
culations of  the  closet  may  be  disturbed  and  tossed 
into  confusion  by  any  sidelong  accident  it  was  im- 
possible to  detect,  this  failure  is  not  so  strange; 
but  even  in  the  exacter  sciences,  where  material 
laws  are  fixed  and  well  understood,  the  failure  is 
hardly  less  flagrant.  The  wisest  Medical  skill  will 
fail  in  its  predictions  almost  as  often  as  the  guess 
of  the  empiric.  The  best  scientist  of  his  time  pro- 
nounced the  impossibility  of  navigating  the  At- 
lantic by  steamers  at  the  very  moment  when  the 
first  steamship  was  on  her  bounding  way  to  the 
opposite  continent. 

Whenever  Science  parts  with  its  abstractness, 
and  mixes  itself  with  the  moving  concrete  of  prac- 
tical life,  it  'io  far  forfeits  its  certainty.  Its  high- 
est, its  sole  achievement  is  to  know  what  is.  God 
has  not  granted  it  as  a  normal  attainment  of  the 
human  intellect  to  read  the  future.  Hence  it  is  that 
the  gift  of  prophecy  has  always  been  regarded  as  a 
a  miraculous  endowment,  attesting  a  divine  influ- 
ence, and  to  the  possessor  of  the  gift  men  have  bowed 
down  with  reverence  and  prayers  and  rich  gifts. 


The  Holy  Ghost.  117 


We  need  not  touch  the  question  of  the  pagan 
oracles,  with  their  equivocal  pronouncements  and 
the  clinging  suspicion  of  collusion.  We  are  speak- 
ing of  the  Holy  Ghost  as  he  spake  by  the  prophets 
of  the  elder  Scriptures.  Those  Scriptures  are  re- 
markable for  nothing  so  much  as  for  their  prophecy. 
They  are  a  chain  of  forecasting  testimonies,  uttered 
with  assurance,  and  in  some  cases  depicting  the 
future  with  such  vivid  distinctness  that  our  imag- 
inations can  sketch  the  scene  as  a  transaction  before 
our  eyes. 

Now  these  prophecies  were  mainly  concerned 
with  the  character  and  biography  of  one  single  per- 
son, the  promised  Messiah,  whose  history  was  so 
unique,  abounding  in  incidents  so  far  outside  the 
usual  current  of  events,  that  a  single  prophecy, 
touching  only  a  few  of  such  events,  if  it  should  be 
verified  by  a  fulfilment,  would  be  lifted  far  above 
the  level  of  a  lucky  guess,  and  might  claim  inspir- 
ation for  its  origin.  But  the  strangeness  is  al- 
most infinitely  enhanced  when  we  consider  the 
vast  variety  of  particulars  that  were  to  centre  in 
the  life  of  that  coming  man,  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
some  of  them  almost  self-contradictory  and  un- 


Ii8  Lecture  Fourth, 


warranted  by  the  accepted  principles  of  human 
nature  and  the  laws  of  probability. 

To  show  how  far  towards  the  infinite  the  strange- 
ness of  fulfilment  truly  reached,  I  borrow  the  state- 
ment of  the  eminent  mathematician,  Dr.  Olinthus 
Gregory. 

Suppose  there  had  been  only  ten  men  professing 
to  be  prophets,  and  that  each  one  of  the  ten  should 
fix  upon  only  five  independent  criteria  touching 
place,  government,  events,  doctrine,  character, 
sufferings,  or  death  of  one  particular  person;  then, 
according  to  the  principles  employed  by  mathe- 
maticians in  reference  to  the  doctrine  of  chances, 
the  probability  against  the  happening  of  these  fifty 
particulars  in  any  way  is  that  of  the  fiftieth  power 
of  two  to  unity,  that  is,  the  probability  is  greater 
than  eleven  hundred  and  twenty-five  millions  of 
millions  to  one  that  all  these  circumstances  do  not 
turn  up  even  at  distinct  periods. 

Now,  if  to  this  computation  we  add  the  element 
of  time,  and  consider  that  any  of  these  predictions 
might,  on  the  principle  of  chance,  take  place  from 
the  time  of  the  prophecy  to  the  end  of  the  world, 
then  the  chance  of  their  happening  at  the  time 


The  Holy  Ghost.  119 


predicted  would  be  so  unlikely  that  it  surpasses 
the  power  of  numbers  to  express  the  improbability. 
Can  we  say  less,  then,  touching  the  Messianic  pre- 
dictions, than  that  the  Holy  Ghost  spake  by  the 
Prophets  ? 

As  we  read  those  prophecies  we  cannot  avoid 
thinking  that  "  holy  men  spake  as  they  were 
moved,"  not  knowing  always  the  pregnancy  of 
what  they  spake,  sometimes  with  an  unconsciously 
double  sense,  looking  along  the  line  from  the 
typical  fact  before  their  eyes  to  the  great  anti- 
typical  event  on  which  the  prophecy  terminated, 
sometimes  speaking  with  coolness  and  deliberation, 
at  other  times  wrapt  into  an  abnormal  state  by  the 
vision  and  the  faculty  divine,  yet  uttering  with 
their  human  lips  the  eternal  mind  of  God. 

But  the  Holy  Ghost  has  other  ways  besides  the 
Prophetic  way  of  laying  himself  alongside  the  mind 
of  man,  and  giving  form  and  pressure  to  his 
thoughts  and  mental  instincts.  In  the  awakening 
of  high  moral  conceptions,  and  the  stirring  of  the 
motive  powers  of  the  soul  to  reach  out  for  their 
fulfilment,  opening  before  its  lifted  eye  a  surpas- 
sing realm  of  purity  and  love  and  unchecked  moral 


120  Lecture  Fourth. 

power,  to  become  its  own  in  a  life  after  death, — 
such  things  have  come  into  men's  lives  as  powers, 
not  homeborn,  but  foreign  and  divine.  Socrates 
seems  to  have  been  conscious  of  it  daily.  His  de- 
mon of  good,  was  it  not  the  directing  Holy  Ghost  ? 

The  Holy  Ghost  again  rules  in  that  supernal 
region  of  man's  nature,  the  region  of  the  moral 
sense.  Conscience  is  indeed  the  throne  of  the  Holy 
Ghost.  It  is  the  regal  faculty  whose  divinity  no 
man  ever  dared  deny.  Whenever  he  heard  the 
voice  of  the  grand  moral  imperative  and  looked 
within,  he  was  sure  to  stand  face  to  face  with  the 
Holy  Ghost. 

If  he  thwarted  his  conscience,  defied  it,  even  cru- 
cified it,  he  has  always  felt  that  his  antagonism  was 
rebellion  and  that  he  had  crucified  his  king.  The 
function  of  this  Divine  Spirit  is  to  touch  the  cords 
of  the  moral  nature,  and  to  keep  its  sensibility 
awake  to  the  issues  of  good  and  evil.  It  is  He 
who  probes  the  peccant  parts  of  the  soul  to  make 
us  feel  how  deep  the  sinuous  ulcer  runs.  He  de- 
tains our  rambling  fancies,  and  makes  us  think 
with  an  inner  concentration  that  shall  beget  a 
better  self-knowledge.     He  shows   us   right   and 


The  Holy  Ghost.  12 1 


wrong  aloof  from  those  mixed  tints  of  life  that 
make  sin  seem  attractive,  and  reveals  to  us  the 
white  light  of  righteousness,  that  we  can  see  how 
unshadedly  bright  is  good,  and  how  deadly  black, 
without  a  ray  of  relieving  light,  is  sin.  It  is  in 
this  way,  by  its  clear  marking  of  moral  distinctions 
to  the  soul  through  the  illuminated  conscience, 
that  the  Holy  Ghost  prepares  the  way  for  his  cov- 
enanted and  commissioned  agency  as  the  repre- 
sentative of  Christ. 

"  He  shall  take  of  the  things  of  mine,"  says  the 
Saviour,  "and  shall  show  them  unto  you."  In 
order  to  this,  in  order  to  prepare  an  entrance  for 
the  Great  Salvation,  to  create  a  loathing  of  unright- 
eousness, and  a  longing  in  the  soul  for  a  perfect 
emancipation  from  its  power,  the  conscience  must 
be  both  enlightened  and  sensitive.  And  then, 
when,  possessed  by  the  alternate  loathing  and  long- 
ing, it  cries,  What  shall  I  do?  the  indwelling 
Spirit  reveals  the  cross  and  the  Crucified,  and  im- 
parts to  the  vague  feelings  definite  shape  and 
quality.  In  the  presence  of  the  Crucified,  the 
hated  unrighteousness  seems  to  the  soul  like  the 
crucifixion  of  his  Lord,  and  the  coveted  righteous- 


122  Lecture  Fourth 


ness  takes  on  the  form  of  affectionate  desire  to  be 
joined  to  the  personal  Saviour. 

This  wondrous  transformation  of  a  man's  moral 
sensibilities  marks  an  epoch  in  his  life.  It  is  so 
novel  and  unexpected  that  he  feels  he  never  tried 
to  produce  it,  he  did  not  know  how.  It  came  to 
him  from  abroad  and  worked  within  him. 

Something  not  himself  has  grasped  his  very  self, 
and  inspired  him  with  the  transcendent  conscious- 
ness; and  as  he  traces  back  the  steps  of  that  con- 
sciousness he  marks  the  footprints,  side  by  side 
with  his  own,  of  Christ's  blessed  Paraclete,  the 
Holy  Ghost,  Lord  of  his  moral  life. 

But  there  is  yet  one  more  step  for  the  soul  and 
one  more  work  for  the  Holy  Ghost  before  the 
gracious  victory  is  complete.  There  must  be  the 
glad  surrender  of  faith  that  shall  bring  the  soul 
and  Christ  actually  together.  Thus  far  his  con- 
science was  touched  and  awakened  by  another. 
His  affections  and  desires  were  separate  from  their 
old  objects  almost  in  spite  of  himself.  The  pro- 
cess of  change  was  hardly  a  matter  of  conscious- 
ness, certainly  not  a  matter  of  volition.  He  has 
been  the  passive  recipient  ol  influence,  and  to  this 


The  Holy  Ghost.  123 


point  his  active  powers  have  been  idle.  These 
active  powers  are  gathered  and  represented  in  his 
will.  His  true  personality  resides  in  it  alone.  It 
is  the  organ  of  his  selfhood.  Shall  his  will  bear 
him  on  to  the  cross  ?  It  is  the  pivot  question  of 
his  life  of  lives.  Is  the  Holy  Ghost  the  Sovereign 
Lord  of  his  volition  ?  Does  God  control  the  will  ? 
This  is  the  great  question  of  the  ages,  perhaps  of 
the  eternities.  It  is  the  first  puzzling  problem 
of  human  thought,  and  human  thought  never  sees 
its  way  out  of  it. 

Two  parties  of  thinkers  stand  in  opposite  ranks, 
and  can  do  nothing  but  flaunt  their  banners  in 
each  other's  faces  and  claim  the  victory. 

Liberty  and  necessity,  God's  sovereignty  and 
Man's  freedom, — the  earliest  philosophy  took  up 
the  question,  and  the  latest  philosophy  has  not  laid 
it  down.  If  the  Holy  Ghost  is  lord  of  my  will, 
how  am  I  responsible  ?  If  my  will  is  free,  then 
how  am  I  dependent  on  the  Holy  Ghost  ?  The 
answer  to  this  question  must  take  the  form  of 
compromise,  or  at  least  must  be  content  with  dem- 
onstrating the  facts  and  leaving  the  reconciling  of 
them  to  rest  among  the  mysteries.     We  may,  for 


124  Lecture  Fourth. 


example,  demonstrate  the  absolute  sovereignty  of 
God  by  arguments  the  most  conclusive,  without  a 
flaw  in  the  premises  or  a  single  hitch  in  the  train 
of  deduction,  and  having  done  so,  we  may  sum  up 
the  conclusion,  and  label  it  "  proved  "  and  place  it 
away  on  some  shelf  of  the  mind. 

And  then  we  may  demonstrate  the  freedom  of 
the  human  will  by  proof  different  from  the  other, 
but  still  conclusive, — by  the  testimony  of  conscious- 
ness, a  basic  proof,  the  ultimate  source  and  foun- 
dation of  all  conviction.  And  this  conclusion  we 
may  label  "  proved,"  and  lay  it  on  the  shelves  of 
the  mind. 

Thus  we  have  the  two  statements,  each  one  de- 
monstrated as  an  infallible  truth  by  the  only  evi- 
dence that  is  adapted  to  the  case.  Both  are  true; 
yet  when  we  take  down  these  shelved  conclusions, 
and  compare  them  with  one  another,  they  are  mutu- 
ally contradictory,  and  our  reason  cries  out  in  de- 
spair for  a  light  that  God  has  not  given.  In  this 
ignorance  we  must  walk,  content  to  know  that 
somewhere  in  the  hidden  councils  of  the  upper 
world  the  problem  has  a  solution. 

It  is  a  remarkable  fact  in  the  study  of  this  con- 


The  Holy  Ghost.  125 

troversy  that  while  man's  speculative  reason  de- 
murs at  accepting  this  contradictory  position  of 
liberty  and  necessity,  sovereignty  and  freedom,  his 
experimental  conviction  embraces  them  both  in  one 
fervid  belief  that  makes  the  very  life  and  joy  of  his 
religion.  When  any  soul,  under  the  lead  of  the 
awakened  conscience  and  the  heavenly  longing, 
inspired  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  does  actually  surren- 
der its  will,  with  all  its  engrossment  of  heart  and 
life,  to  the  faith  and  service  of  Jesus  Christ,  the 
process  seems  to  bear  a  twofold  consciousness:  on 
the  one  hand,  there  is  the  deepest  laid  sense  that 
there  never  was  an  act  of  its  life  so  profoundly  and 
delightedly  free  as  that  act  of  self-surrender,  and 
at  the  same  moment  there  is  a  conviction,  not  less 
deep,  that  the  freedom  was  not  an  independent 
freedom,  that  the  will  was  not  self-moved.  And 
when  the  dedicated  soul  stands  upon  its  feet  again, 
full  of  the  sense  of  its  new,  free,  spiritual  manhood, 
the  first  breath  of  its  freedom  will  utter  itself  in 
the  ascription,  "Not  unto  me,  not  unto  me,  but 
unto  Thee,  0  Holy  Ghost,  Sovereign  Lord  of  my 
moral  life !  "  Many  speculative  difficulties  are 
solved  by  experiment;  and  as  there  is  no  difficulty 


126  Lecture  Fourth. 

so  bewildering  to  the  reason  as  this  difficulty  of 
man's  freedom  and  dependence,  so  none  ever  had 
such  an  illustrious  solution  in  the  deepest  experi- 
mental consciousness  of  the  soul. 

But  although  the  current  of  our  life  passes  thus 
between  two  rocky  abutments,  rising  up  in  a  per- 
pendicular antagonism  that  no  earthly  theory  can 
reconcile,  yet  we  know  that  beyond  the  vapory 
height  of  our  vision,  in  the  bright  depth  of  God's 
counsels,  the  separation  is  firmly  bridged  over,  and 
the  repugnant  ideas  are  linked  into  structural  unity 
of  truth. 

There  is  another  agency  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  as 
the  agent  and  commissioner  of  Christ,  which  can- 
not be  passed  by, — his  agency,  namely,  in  giving 
efficacy  to  the  appointed  means  of  grace,  the 
preaching  and  the  sacraments  of  the  church. 

It  is  interesting  to  know,  if  we  can,  in  what  way 
a  spiritual  agency  can  work  through  material 
means.  The  word  of  God  is  the  Sword  of  the  Spir- 
it, piercing  even  to  the  dividing  asunder  of  soul 
and  spirit.  Does  its  Divine  efficacy  depend  upon 
the  sharpness  of  the  instrument  or  on  the  suscep- 
tibility of  the  hearer  and  reader  of  the  word  ? 


The  Holy  Ghost.  127 


Does  the  Holy  Ghost  cause  the  truths  of  salvation 
to  be  any  more  true  at  one  time  than  at  another, 
or  does  he  work  among  the  moral  sensibilities  of 
the  heart  to  make  an  entrance  for  the  truth  ?  The 
word  of  God  as  a  vehicle  of  the  truth  of  God,  is  it 
not  just  as  full  of  truth  at  one  time  as  at  another  ? 
Is  there  an  ebb  and  flow  of  meaning  in  his  revealed 
word  ?  Is  it  not  always  full  of  himself?  If  it  be 
the  same  revelation,  then  there  can  be  no  influence 
of  the  Holy  Ghost  upon  the  word,  to  make  it  more 
or  less ;  but  as  God  opened  the  heart  of  Lydia  to 
receive  the  things  that  were  spoken  by  Paul,  so 
must  it  always  be.  We  can  conceive  that  he  who 
is  Lord  of  the  soul's  life  can,  by  the  affinity  of  na- 
ture, work  among  its  motive  powers,  mellow  its 
feelings,  abate  its  self-conceit,  exalt  its  ambitions, 
tone  down  its  antagonisms,  create  a  holy  hunger 
and  thirst,  so  that  when  the  oft-rejected  word  of 
God  comes  to  it  again,  it  may  find  a  heart  already 
prepared  and  opened  by  the  Holy  Ghost. 

Its  efficacy,  therefore,  lies  not  in  any  new  prop- 
erty imparted  to  the  truth  itself,  but  in  the  quick- 
ening of  the  soul,  touched  by  the  kindred  life  of 
the  Divine  Spirit. 


128  Lecture  Fourth. 

And  must  we  not  say  the  same  of  the  sacra- 
ments? Is  the  baptismal  water  imbued  with  a 
quality  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  so  that  its  bathing  touch 
shall  send  a  quickening  shock  to  the  soul  of  sin  ? 
Do  the  bread  and  wine  take  into  themselves  such 
a  property  of  positive  holiness,  that  they  carry 
to  the  lips  of  every  recipient  the  body  and  blood 
of  the  Crucified  ?  Material  substances  may  be 
charged  with  material  forces,  that  communicate 
themselves  to  other  material  things.  Heat  and 
electricity  and  magnetism  are  diffusible  properties, 
and  spread  themselves  by  fixed  laws  of  material 
affinity,  but  a  moral  force  gathered  into  a  material 
substance  is  out  of  the  analogy  of  things.  A  prop- 
erty of  unintelligent  matter  communicating  a  force 
to  the  intelligent  and  moral  soul  is  an  idea  that 
has  no  resembling  fact  in  all  the  world.  Why 
should  we  suppose  such  a  diversity  of  method  in 
the  working  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  now  influencing 
the  spirit  of  man  by  conviction,  by  persuasion,  by 
comforting,  by  awakening,  by  inspiring,  and  all 
by  a  direct  illapse, — the  moral  grasping  the  moral, 
the  spiritual  embracing  the  spiritual,  in  perfect  and 
beautiful   congruity;  and  then  directing  itself  to 


The  Holy  Ghost.  129 

produce  the  same  spiritual  results  by  outside  un- 
spiritual  means, — material  forces  acting  to  stir  that 
one  thing  with  which  in  all  the  world  material 
things  are  most  out  of  harmony,  the  spirit  and 
soul  of  man.  The  dispensation  under  which  we 
live  is  the  dispensation  of  the  Spirit;  and  must  not 
all  his  influence  on  us,  and  our  reciprocal  approaches 
towards  him,  be  after  the  nature  of  spirit  life  and 
spirit  communion  ?  To  suppose  that  a  material, 
mechanical  substance  can  be  charged  with  the 
property  of  holiness  seems  to  wipe  out  all  the  dis- 
tinctions of  thought,  requires  a  revision  of  our  dic- 
tionaries. Instead  of  that  sublime  exercise  of  faith 
in  which  the  soul  holds  conscious  converse  with 
its  unseen  but  not  distant  Lord,  it  substitutes  a 
simple  belief  of  the  external  fact  that  the  Holy 
Ghost  is  mingled  in  with  the  matter  of  the  sacra- 
ment. If  the  one  be  faith  worthy  of  the  noblest 
Christian  manhood,  the  other  would  seem  to  be 
the  inadequate  conception  of  the  child  period  of 
the  spiritual  life. 

Let  us  rather  believe  thus,  then :  The  Spirit  bears 
witness  with  our  spirits,  spiritually  and  not  ma- 
terially, and  though  He  makes  a  covenanted  use 


130  Lecture  Fourth. 

of  those  Divine  occasions  when  God's  word  is  taught 
and  his  sacraments  are  administered,  to  quicken 
our  affections,  strengthen  our  faith,  exalt  our 
hopes,  fortify  our  consciences,  and  to  stamp  our 
souls  with  the  seal  of  his  assurance,  yet  is  he  not 
fettered  to  occasions  nor  incorporated  with  mate- 
rial means;  but  with  the  glorious  power  of  his  om- 
nipresence he  besets  us  behind  and  before,  about 
our  path  and  about  our  bed,  strengthens,  comforts, 
upholds  us,  gives  us  grace  to  live  as  becomes  us 
and  to  die  in  the  peace  of  his  felt  communion.  In 
a  word,  he  takes  the  things  of  Christ  and  shows 
them  to  us,  stands  to  us  in  Christ's  place,  as  if  he 
were  Christ,  making  us  to  know  all  that  we  can 
know  of  Christ  on  earth,  and  then,  as  the  Lord  of 
our  lives,  presenting  us,  cleansed  with  his  own 
unction,  to  the  adorable  Saviour,  whom  not  having 
seen  the  Holy  Ghost  had  taught  us  to  love,  and  in 
him  to  rejoice  with  a  joy  unspeakable  and  full  of 
glory.  Then  the  vicegerent  office  of  the  Holy 
Ghost  is  fulfilled,  though  his  sweetness  abides  with 
us  forever  in  the  communion  of  Father,  Son,  and 
Holy  Ghost,  with  the  redeemed,  who  shall  die  no 
more. 


Studies  in   the   History  of  the 
Prayer  Book. 

[  The  Anglican  Reform.  The  Puritan  Innovations. 
The  Elizabethan  Reaction.  The  Caroline  Settle- 
ment.]    With  Appendices. 

By  Herbert  Mortimer  Luckock,  D.D.,  author  of 
" After  Death." 

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new  work,  entitled  'Studies  in  the  History  of  the  Prayer  Book,' 
he  fully  maintains  the  standard  of  his  first  treatise.  His  divisions 
have  a  ring  about  them  very  like  the  touch  of  that  master  of  Eng- 
lish history,  John  Richard  Green.  The  reader  feels  that  in 
following  such  a  teacher  he  has  at  least  a  living  thought  as  the 
clue  to  guide  him  among  the  intricacies  and  technicalities  of  litur- 
gical study.  Dr.  Luckock  does  not  seem  to  have  reached  the 
very  highest  ruund  in  the  ladder  of  Anglican  Catholicity,  but  is 
well  up  in  that  direction.  He  is  near  enough  to  Dean  Stanley  to 
emulate  the  realistic  touches  in  '  The  History  of  the  Eastern 
Church,'  and  at  the  same  time  is  near  enough  to  Canon  Liddon  to 
preserve  his  clearness  of  statement  on  theological  poinds.  He  has 
succeeded  in  clothing  some  very  dry  bones  with  flesh  quite  rosy 
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and  must  secure  a  decided  success  as  the  most  readable  work  of 
its  special  class." — The  Episcopal  Register. 

"  It  is  just  the  book  that  every  student  of  the  Prayer  Book  has 
wanted." — Standard  of  the  Cross. 

"Liturgical  development  is  becoming  a  matter  of  absorbing 
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literature  of  the  subject." — The  Churchman. 


Thomas  TVhittaker,  Publisher,  2  &  3  Bible  House,  N.  Y. 


ANDREW  JUKES'  NEW  WORK. 

Tfye  New  Mai]  and  tlje  Eternal  Life, 

Notes  on  the  Reiterated  Aniens  of  the  Son  of  God. 
By  Andrew  Tukes,  author  of  "  Types  of  Genesis," 
' The  Restitution  of  all  Things,"  "The  Law  of 
the  Offerings,"  "  Characteristic  Differences  of  the 
Four  Gospels,"  etc. 

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"'Verily,  verily!'  Many  times  did  our  Lord  employ  these 
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times  does  Christ  arouse  attention  to  specific  doctrines  of  the 
kingdom  by  such  reiterations  Our  author  takes  up  these  twelve 
cas^s  and  develops  the  respective  deliverances  of  the  Saviour  in 
the  connection.  He  writes  with  intense  feeling,  and  with  a  full- 
ness of  Scripture  knowledge  which  seems  exceptional.  There  is 
much  that  is  stimulating  and  suggestive,  both  in  the  conception  of 
his  work  and  in  its  execution.  *  *  *  The  work  is  a  most 
helpful  one,  and  makes  a  worthy  addition  to  the  list  of  books 
already  published  by  this  author." — The  Standard,  Chicago. 

"  Andrew  Jukes  is  a  voluminous  writer,  but  he  is  an  original  and 
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is  one  of  the  most  original  and  ingenious  of  his  works,  and  will 
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The  Parish  Visitor. 

"  We  have  found  the  book  suggestive  and  spiritually  stimulat- 
ing. " —  The  Congregaiionalist . 

"  They  who  want  a  rich  feast  may  herein  eat  and  be  satisfied. 
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intensely  interesting.  Entirely  original,  it  is  a  book  which  will  be 
read  and  re-read  with  ever-increasing  pleasure  and  profit." — The 
Church  Guardian,  Halifax. 


THOMAS  WHITTAKER,    Publisher, 

3    «fc    3    BIBLE    HOUSE,    NEW     YORK. 


One  volume,  ha?idsomely  printed,  334  pp.,  72 mo,  cloth 
extra,  $1.30. 


eroes  of  the  fission  1|iel(l, 


By  the  Rt.  Rev.  W.  Pakenham  Walsh,  D.D.,  Bishop  cf 

Ossary,  Ferns  and  Leighlin.     Author  of  "  Heroes  of 

the  Mission  Field,"  "The  Moabite  Stone,"  etc. 


CONTENTS: 

I.  Henry  Martyn :  India  and  Persia,   1:805-1812. 

II.  William  Carey :  India,  1793-1834. 

III.  Adoniram  Judson  :  Burmah,  1813-1850. 

IV.  Robert  Morrison  :  China,  1807-1834. 

V.  Samuel  Marsden :  New  Zealand,  1814-1838. 

VI.  John  Williams :  Polynesia,  1817-1839. 

VII.  William  Johnson:  West  Africa,  1816-1823. 

VIII.  John  Hunt:  Fiji,  1838-1848. 

IX.  Allen  Gardiner:  South  America,  1835-1851 

X.  Alexander  Duff:  India,  1829-1864. 

XI.  David  Livingstone  :  Africa,  1840-1873. 

XII.  Bishop  Patteson:  Melanesia,  1855-187 1. 

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publisher  for  bringing  out  so  good  a  book  in  a  style  of  type  and 
paper  which  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired.  The  book  is  one  which 
must  be  read  by  those  who  would  know  its  merits.  No  news- 
paper notice  can  do  justice  to  it." — The  Living  Church. 

"It  is  entitled  to  a  place  in  every  library,  and  should  be 
purchased  and  read  by  every  one  interested  in  the  work  of  Foreign 
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"A  good  book  to  have  in  hand  if  one  is  to  keep  the  divine 
spirit  of  the  missio  nary  work  close  to  his  heart." — Standard  of  the 
Cross. 

THOMAS  WHITTAKEB,  Publisher, 

a    &    3    BIBIvE    HOUSE,     NEW    YORK. 


aksia  mmtiQiicana. 


A  History  of  the  Church  of  Christ  in  England,  from 
the  Earliest  to  the  Present  Times.  By  Arthur 
Charles  Jennings,  M.A.  With  marginal  Sum- 
maries of  paragraphs,  and  full  alphabetical  Index. 


J02  pp.,  i2mo,  cloth,  red  edges,      .      .      .    Price,  $2.25. 


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England  that  will  be  a  boon  to  the  professor  of  ecclesiastical  his- 
tory and  a  comfort  to  his  students.  Put  tog<  ther  Bates'  College 
Lectures,  Carwithen,  Churton,  Short,  and  all  the  other  books 
through  which  we  used  to  be  obliged  to  wade  in  order  to  acquaint 
ourselves,  tolerably,  with  the  history  of  cur  Church,  and  we  s-houM 
not  do  more  than  begin  to  approach  to  exact  knowledge  of  its 
history  which  Mr.  Jennings  has  furnished  us  in  this  single  volume. 
*  *  *  He  follows  none  of  the  old  style  types  of  so-called  his- 
tory, which  consists  mainly  in  hero-building.  Every  man,  no 
matter  who,  stands  or  fa  Is,  by  him,  according  to  his  personal 
worth  and  actual  value  in  the  Church  events  of  his  time.  Alto- 
gether, this  work  is  destined  for  long  use  by  students  of  its  subject, 
and  we  regard  its  production  as  one  of  the  noticeable  events  of  the 
present  year." — The  Living  Church. 

"An  unusually  good  book." — The  Am.  Literary  Churchman. 

"One  of  the  most  needed  and  best  written  historical  manuals 
which  has  appeared  for  a  long  time." — The  Standard  of  the  Cross. 

"  The  vo'ume  is  packed  with  information,  given  generally  in  a 
clear,  vivid  way." — The  Lndependent. 

"  We  know  of  no  general  history  of  the  English  Church  which 
is  as  likely  to  be  as  serviceable  as  this,  and  we  are  glad  to  recom- 
mend it  to  our  readers." — The  Churchman. 


THOMAS  WHITTAKER,  Publisher, 

Nos.  2  &  3  BIBLE   HOUSE,  NEW  YORK. 


Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Librar 


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